different between mistrusting vs mistrustful

English

Verb

mistrusting

1. present participle of mistrust

Noun

mistrusting (plural mistrustings)

1. mistrust
   • 1842, Charles Marriott, Christ Risen (sermon)

     We are not to expect such striking revelations as those received of whom we have read, but we may at least learn from them to distrust our own mistrustings.

English

Etymology

mistrust +? -ful

Adjective

mistrustful (comparative more mistrustful, superlative most mistrustful)

1. Having mistrust, lacking trust (in someone or something).
   • c. 1590, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, Act IV, Scene 2,^[1]

     […] I hold it cowardice

     To rest mistrustful where a noble heart

     Hath pawn’d an open hand in sign of love;

   • 1910, Ian Hay, The Right Stuff, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Book Two, Chapter Sixteen, p. 284,^[2]

     In the passage I met the nurse. She greeted me with a little smile; but I was mistrustful of professional cheerfulness that night.

2. Expressing or showing a lack of trust.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, London: William Ponsonbie, Book III, Canto 12, p. 579,^[3]

     He lookt askew with his mistrustfull eyes,

     And nycely trode, as thornes lay in his way

   • 1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, London: Smith, Elder & Co., Volume I, Chapter 10, p. 160,^[4]

     At last, having held a document before her glasses for nearly five minutes, she presented it across the counter; accompanying the act by another inquisitive and mistrustful glance—it was for J. E.

   • 1908, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, Chapter 2,^[5]

     He led the way to the stable-yard accordingly, the Rat following with a most mistrustful expression […]

3. Having a suspicion, imagining or supposing (that something undesirable is the case).
   • 1859, Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, Book 2, Chapter 15,^[6]

     The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and was mistrustful of having made a mistake in his late demonstrations; but no.

4. (obsolete) Causing mistrust, suspicions, or forebodings.
   • 1582, Richard Stanihurst (translator), Thee First Foure Bookes of Virgil his Aeneis, Leiden: John Pates, Book 3, p. 60^[7]

     Vp we gad, owt spredding oure sayls and make to the seaward:

     Al creeks mistrustful with Greekish countrye refusing.

   • 1593 William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis,^[8]

     […] stonish’d as night-wanderers often are,

     Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood,

     Even so confounded in the dark she lay,

     Having lost the fair discovery of her way.

Synonyms

• (having mistrust): distrustful, suspicious, untrusting, wary

Derived terms

• mistrustfully (adv)
• mistrustfulness (n)

References

• mistrustful in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.