Sunday Word: Dispiteous

[sallymn]

dispiteous [dis-pit-ee-uhs]

adjective:
(archaic) without pity or mercy, ruthless

Examples:

Based on Sante Kimes, she is the most compulsive, dispiteous grifter in fiction I can think of. Identity theft, regular theft, fraud, arson, enslavement, murder—it's difficult to enumerate all the crimes Evangeline, her husband Warren, and their son Devin commit over the course of the novel. (Peter Goldberg, All-American Amnesia, The Baffler, January 2020)

She was battling for people she cared about: the dozens of condemned prisoners awaiting execution in dispiteous Southern cellblocks. (Colman Mccarthy, Marie Deans, 'courageous fool' of death row, National Catholic Reporter, July 2017)

Aeneas was our king, foremost of men in righteousness, incomparable in goodness as in warlike arms; whom if fate still preserves, if he draws the breath of heaven and lies not yet low in dispiteous gloom, fear we have none; nor mayest thou repent of challenging the contest of service. (Virgil, The Aenid)

Be but as sweet as is the bitterest, The most dispiteous out of all the gods, I am well pleased. (Algernon Charles Swinburne, 'Phaedra')

The morning had succeeded to the hopeless humidity of the night, and the drizzling rain fell with almost dispiteous persistence. (A M Sullivan, The Wearing of the Green)

Origin:

1795–1805; earlier despiteous, alteration, after piteous, of dispitous, despitous, Middle English from Anglo-French, Old French; see despite, -ous; later taken as dis-1 + piteous (Dictionary.com)