funest

Etymology

From French funeste, from Latin fūnestus, from fūnus (“funeral; death”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fjuːˈnɛst/

Adjective

funest (comparative more funest, superlative most funest)

1. (now rare) Causing death or disaster; fatal, catastrophic; deplorable, lamentable.
   • 1663 Sept 17th, John Evelyn in a letter to Dr. Pierce, published 1863 in Diary and correspondence of John Evelyn, F.R.S., volume 3, page 142:

     I do assure you, there is nothing I have a greater scorn and indignation against, than these wretched scoffers; and I look upon our neglect of severely punishing them as an high defect in our politics, and a forerunner of something very funest.

   • 1716 Nov 7th, quoted from 1742, probably Alexander Pope, God's Revenge Against Punning, from Miscellanies, 3rd volume, page 226:

     Scarce had this unhappy Nation recover'd these funest disasters, when the abomination of Play-houses rose up in this land: From hence hath an inundation of Obscenity flow'd from the Court and overspread the Kingdom.

   • 1854, Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

     …excepting only some Popes have be'en remarked by their own histories for funest and direful deaths.

   • 1922 (first published 1923-09-07), Wallace Stevens, Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds, from collection Harmonium:

     Funest philosophers and ponderers,
     Their evocations are the speech of clouds.

   • 1969, Vladimir Nabokov, Ada or Ardor, Penguin 2011, p. 264:

     Flora, initially an ivory-pale, dark-haired funest beauty, whom the author transformed just in time into a third bromidic dummy with a dun bun.

Adjective

funest (feminine funesta, masculine plural funests or funestos, feminine plural funestes)

1. funest