incommodious definition

English

Etymology

From in- +‎ commodious. Compare Latin incommodus.

Adjective

incommodious (comparative more incommodious, superlative most incommodious)

1. (of a place) Uncomfortable or inhospitable, especially due to being cramped or small, narrow, etc.
   • 1859, Charles Dickens, “Five Years Later”, in A Tale of Two Cities, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, book II (The Golden Thread), page 33:

     Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious.

   • 1909, Henry James, “Venice”, in Italian hours, Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, →OCLC, page 36:

     The place is small and incommodious, the pictures are out of sight and ill-lighted, the custodian is rapacious, the visitors are mutually intolerable, but the shabby little chapel is a palace of art.

   • 2010 June 15, Katherine Knorr, “Contemplating Art, and Its Sideshow”, in The New York Times‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2019-06-17:

     In this they succeeded last week, despite menacing clouds and slick pavement, filling to capacity (and until past midnight) the 1937 building’s incommodious terrace with a mostly young and fairly international crowd.

2. Discomforting, inconvenient, or disagreeable.

   Synonyms: troublesome, annoying, (obsolete) incommode

   • 1783, Samuel Johnson, “Savage”, in The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets; with Critical Observations on Their Works, volume III, London: Printed for C. Bathurst, […] , →OCLC, page 292:

     He was ſometimes ſo far compaſſionated by thoſe who knew both his merit and diſtreſſes, that they received him into their famillies, but they ſoon diſovered him to be a very incommodious inmate; […]

   • 1859, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “Adam and Dinah”, in Adam Bede […], volume III, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book sixth, page 281:

     “ […] What a silly you must be!” a comment which Tommy followed up by seizing Dinah with both arms, and dancing along by her side with incommodious fondness.

   • 1865, Charles Darwin, “Part I.—Spirally Twining Plants”, in On the Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants, London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, and Williams and Norgate, →OCLC, page 12:

     A dense whorl of many leaves would apparently be incommodious: for a twining plant, and some authors have supposed that none have their leaves thus arranged; but a twining Siphomeris has whorls of three.

3. (obsolete, of a person) Troublesome; difficult to deal with.
   • 1610 October, John Foxe, “A deſcription of the ten fifth perſecutions in the primitiue church, with a liuely portraiture of the variety of their torments”, in The Second Volume of the Ecclesiasticall Historie, Containing the Acts and Monuments of Martyrs, […], 6th edition, volume II, London: […] [Humphrey Lownes] for the Company of Stationers, →OCLC, book VII, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus emperor, to the ſenat and people of Rome, page 46, column 2:

     In the time of this Commodus, although hee was an incommodious prince to the ſenators of Rome, yet notwithstanding there was ſome quietneſſe univerſally through the whole church of Christ from percefution, by what occaſion it is not certaine.

   • 1739, [David Hume], “Of Goodness and Benevolence”, in A Treatise of Human Nature: […], London: […] John Noon, […], →OCLC; republished as L[ewis] A[mherst] Selby-Bigge, editor, A Treatise of Human Nature […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press, 1896, →OCLC, book II (Of the Passions), part III (Of the Other Virtues and Vices), page 606:

     And we may observe in general, that if we can find any quality in a person, which renders him incommodious to those, who live and converse with him, we always allow it to be a fault or blemish, without any farther examination.

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

References

• John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “incommodious, a.”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.

Further reading

• “incommodious”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.