Unkindly

These stories are as old as anything that men have invented. They were narrated by naked savage women to naked savage children. They have been inherited by our earliest civilised ancestors, who really believed that beasts and trees and stones can talk if they choose, and behave kindly or unkindly. The stories are full of the oldest ideas of ages when science did not exist, and magic took the place of science.

My older brother was treated unkindly.

It’s tough when someone I care about treats me unkindly.

Preceded by the beadle, and attended by an irregular procession of stern-browed men and unkindly visaged women, Hester Prynne set forth towards the place appointed for her punishment.

[…] she had seen a not unkindly wink pass between the two.

From this superfluous pulp in unkindely, and wet years, may arise that multiplicity of little insects, which infest the Roots and Sprouts of tender Graines and pulses.

Unkindly cold and tempest shrill / In life’s morn oft the traveller chill,

That detestable sight him much amazde, / To see th’vnkindly Impes of heauen accurst, / Deuoure their dam;

1678, Robert Sanderson, Nine Cases of Conscience Occasionally Determined, London: H. Brome et al., p. 128, […] the want of mercy in a Father, is more unkindly, more unseemly, more unnatural than in another man […]

Good master, take it not unkindly, pray, / That I have been thus pleasant [i.e. joking] with you both.