THANKLESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does thankless mean? 

• THANKLESS (adjective)
  The adjective THANKLESS has 2 senses:

1. not feeling or showing gratitude

2. not likely to be rewarded

  Familiarity information: THANKLESS used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• THANKLESS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Not feeling or showing gratitude

Synonyms:

thankless; ungrateful; unthankful

Context example:

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is / To have a thankless child!

Similar:

unappreciative (not feeling or expressing gratitude)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Not likely to be rewarded

Synonyms:

thankless; unappreciated; ungratifying

Context example:

grading papers is a thankless task

Similar:

unrewarding (not rewarding; not providing personal satisfaction)

 Context examples 

That night I knew he had a false and thankless heart.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

This state of things should have been to me a paradise of peace, accustomed as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless fagging; but, in fact, my racked nerves were now in such a state that no calm could soothe, and no pleasure excite them agreeably.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Everybody at all addicted to letter-writing, without having much to say, which will include a large proportion of the female world at least, must feel with Lady Bertram that she was out of luck in having such a capital piece of Mansfield news as the certainty of the Grants going to Bath, occur at a time when she could make no advantage of it, and will admit that it must have been very mortifying to her to see it fall to the share of her thankless son, and treated as concisely as possible at the end of a long letter, instead of having it to spread over the largest part of a page of her own.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)