ignominious

adjective ig·no·min·i·ous \ ˌig-nə-ˈmi-nē-əs \

|Updated on: 26 Jul 2018

Examples: ignominious in a Sentence

Editor's Note: Did You Know?

Definition of ignominious

1 : marked with or characterized by disgrace or shame : dishonorable

2 : deserving of shame or infamy : despicable

3 : humiliating, degrading

an ignominious defeat

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ignominiously

adverb

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ignominiousness

noun

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Examples of ignominious in a Sentence

some of his friends considered the job of janitor to be an ignominious fate for the laid-off executive
the prison guards degraded themselves with their inhumane, ignominious treatment of the prisoners

Recent Examples of ignominious from the Web

No player who qualified for the batting title since 1900 has ever hit below .179, an ignominious honor that belongs to Rob Deer with the 1991 Detroit Tigers and Dan Uggla of the 2013 Atlanta Braves.

— jared diamond, WSJ, "The Slugger Who Is on Track for the Worst Single Season in Baseball History," 8 July 2018
The bodies reached Hart Island on a ferry like all the others, in spare wooden boxes and bound for ignominious mass interment off the coast of the Bronx where New York City buries its unclaimed dead by the hundreds in long, shallow trenches.

— corey kilgannon, New York Times, "Dead of AIDS and Forgotten in Potter’s Field," 3 July 2018
But added together, there are enough to put the Orioles on an ignominious pace.

— jon meoli, baltimoresun.com, "Orioles' 58-loss first half on pace with the worst teams in modern baseball," 30 June 2018
However, Neymar is also known for something slightly more ignominious—flopping.

— melissa locker, Time, "Hilarious Young Soccer Players Had Way Too Much Fun Doing 'the Neymar'," 6 July 2018
The project never recovered from this ignominious retreat, and it was canceled in 1944.

— lucy cooke, ajc, "US military is interested in bats as possible defenders against bioweapons," 3 July 2018
In 2012, an ignominious exit from the eurozone looked almost inevitable.

— tim lister, CNN, "Europe is on the verge of a big new crisis, just six years after the last one," 2 June 2018
Months after the festival's ignominious end, McFarland was charged with federal wire fraud.

— eric levenson, CNN, "Fyre Festival organizer led scam ticket scheme while out on bail, prosecutors say," 13 June 2018
The departure marks an ignominious end at Athenahealth for Bush, 49, who helped create a software platform that serves more than 100,000 medical providers.

— emma ockerman and scott deveau, chicagotribune.com, "Athenahealth CEO Bush steps down after misconduct allegations, clearing the way for a sale," 6 June 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'ignominious.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

The "-nom-" of "ignominious" comes from "nomen," the Latin word for "name" or "repute." (It's also the root of "misnomer," "nomenclature," and "nominal," among others.) The "ig-" part of the word is akin to the negative prefix in-; when joined to the root "-nom-," it indicates the namelessness that goes with shame or dishonor. To suffer an ignominious fate is to lose the opportunity to make a name for oneself or to lose one's good name. When "ignominious" was first borrowed from a French form of the word in the 15th century, it meant "disgraced" or "dishonorable." "Ignominious" continues to have such meanings, but it also has somewhat milder meanings - "embarrassing" and "humiliating."