UNRELENTING

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does unrelenting mean? 

• UNRELENTING (adjective)
  The adjective UNRELENTING has 3 senses:

1. not to be placated or appeased or moved by entreaty

2. punishingly harsh

3. never-ceasing

  Familiarity information: UNRELENTING used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNRELENTING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Not to be placated or appeased or moved by entreaty

Synonyms:

grim; inexorable; relentless; stern; unappeasable; unforgiving; unrelenting

Context example:

the stern demands of parenthood

Similar:

implacable (incapable of being placated)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Punishingly harsh

Synonyms:

brutal; unrelenting

Context example:

a brutal winter

Similar:

intense (possessing or displaying a distinctive feature to a heightened degree)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Never-ceasing

Synonyms:

persistent; relentless; unrelenting

Context example:

the relentless beat of the drums

Similar:

continual (recurring regularly or frequently in a prolonged and closely spaced series)

 Context examples 

Here was this good and pious lady pursued from place to place by a sinister and unrelenting figure.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Before the discovery of the Hiawatha impact crater, scientists generally assumed that most evidence of past impacts in Greenland and Antarctica would have been wiped away by unrelenting erosion by the overlying ice.

(NASA Finds Possible Second Impact Crater Under Greenland Ice, NASA)

The resolute and unrelenting hatred of her tone, its cold stern sharpness, and its mastered rage, presented her before me, as if I had seen her standing in the light.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I had never doubted his meanness, his craft and malice; but I fully comprehended now, for the first time, what a base, unrelenting, and revengeful spirit, must have been engendered by this early, and this long, suppression.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)