different between neglectful vs undutiful

English

Alternative forms

• neglectfull (archaic)

Etymology

From neglect +? -ful.

Adjective

neglectful (comparative more neglectful, superlative most neglectful)

1. Tending to neglect; failing to take care of matters which require attention.
   • 1891, Rudyard Kipling, "The Finest Story in the World":

     The Fates that are so careful to shut the doors of each successive life behind us had, in this case, been neglectful, and Charlie was looking, though that he did not know, where never man had been permitted to look with full knowledge since Time began.

   • 2005, Plato, Sophist. Translation by Lesley Brown. 243a-b,

     That they were too neglectful of ordinary people like us and overlooked us.

Derived terms

• neglectfully
• neglectfulness

Translations

English

Etymology

un- +? dutiful

Adjective

undutiful (comparative more undutiful, superlative most undutiful)

1. Not dutiful.
   • c. 1590, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, Act V, Scene 5,^[1]

     I know my duty; you are all undutiful:

     Lascivious Edward, and thou perjured George,

     And thou mis-shapen Dick, I tell ye all

     I am your better, traitors as ye are:

     And thou usurp’st my father’s right and mine.

   • 1652, George Herbert, A Priest to the Temple, or, The Countrey Parson, reproduced in George Herbert Palmer (ed.), The English Works of George Herbert, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1905, Volume 2, Chapter 6. The Parson Praying, p. 27,^[2]

     Besides his example, he, having often instructed his people how to carry themselves in divine service, exacts of them all possible reverence, by no means enduring either talking, or sleeping, or gazing, or leaning, or halfe-kneeling, or any undutifull behaviour in them, but causing them when they sit, or stand, or kneel, to do all in a strait and steady posture, as attending to what is done in the Church, and every one, man and child, answering aloud both Amen and all other answers which are on the Clerk’s and people’s part to answer […]

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Book 8, Chapter 3,^[3]

     The doctor retired into the kitchen, where, addressing himself to the landlady, he complained bitterly of the undutiful behaviour of his patient, who would not be blooded, though he was in a fever.

   • 1813, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Volume I, Chapter 20,^[4]

     I have no pleasure in talking to undutiful children.—Not that I have much pleasure indeed in talking to any body.

   • 1850, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Chapter 7,^[5]

     For myself, I felt so much self-reproach and contrition for my part in what had happened, that nothing would have enabled me to keep back my tears but the fear that Steerforth, who often looked at me, I saw, might think it unfriendly—or, I should rather say, considering our relative ages, and the feeling with which I regarded him, undutiful—if I showed the emotion which distressed me.

Translations