adj, verb ·4 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb

1. 1
   present participle and gerund of dishearten form-of, gerund, participle, present

Adjective

1. 1
   Causing a person to lose heart; making despondent or gloomy.

   "After this, with the disheartening failures after the Railway Mania, railway projection in east Cornwall went to sleep."

Adjective

1. 1
   destructive of morale and self-reliance wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

discouragingdiscouragingalarmingawingblackbleak

Antonyms

All antonyms

heartening

Example

More examples

"The recrudescence of his old complaint was disheartening."

Related phrases

lose heart

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.