Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Breeding mischief or evil.
  • noun Bad breeding; bad manners; rudeness; bad bringing up: as, “the ill-breeding of modern young men.”

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun impoliteness resulting from ignorance

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Still others frowned upon their attire: “It is said of [the Jews] that their ill-breeding shows itself in an ignorance of the canons of good taste in dress, which causes them to affect patent leather boots, showy trousers and conspicuous and vulgar jewelry.”

    Leisure and Recreation in the United States. 2009

  • Mr. Russia thinks that all who find him intolerable must be of some certain political opinion, to justify in his own mind his ill-breeding.

    Meghan McCain: "Sarah Palin is the only part of the campaign that I won’t comment on publicly." Ann Althouse 2009

  • “No, certainly,” she answered, “he had all the provocation that ill-breeding could give him.”

    Cecilia 2008

  • “I am sorry you think so, madam,” cried Cecilia, colouring at her ill-breeding.

    Cecilia 2008

  • Mrs. Berlinton, who, though she had thought his uncommonly fine person an excuse for his intrusion, thought nothing could excuse this ill-breeding, proposed they should leave the tea-table, and walk.

    Camilla 2008

  • Her general character, also, for peevishness and haughty ill-breeding, skilfully, from time to time, displayed, and artfully repined at by Mr Monckton, still kept her from suspecting any peculiar animosity to herself, and made her impute all that passed to the mere rancour of ill-humour.

    Cecilia 2008

  • Mr Arnott, extremely disconcerted, began a serious expostulation upon the ill-breeding of this behaviour; but the devil, resting all excuse upon supporting his character, only answered by growling.

    Cecilia 2008

  • Melmond, upon this occasion, was forced into the excursion; his sister represented, so pathetically, the ungrateful ill-breeding of sequestering himself from a company of which it must so publicly be judged Eugenia would make one, with the impossibility of for ever escaping the sight of Indiana, that he could not, in common decency, any longer postpone the double meeting he almost equally dreaded.

    Camilla 2008

  • On the head of good-breeding, he observes, that, “there are two sorts of ill-breeding; the one a sheepish bashfulness, and the other a misbecoming negligence and disrespect in our carriage; both which,” says he, “are avoided by duly observing this one rule, not to think meanly of ourselves, and not to think meanly of others.”

    Pamela 2006

  • For this reason he is every where made to treat jests on sacred things and subjects, even down to the mythology of the Pagans, among Pagans, as undoubted marks of the ill-breeding of the jester; obscene images and talk, as liberties too shameful for even rakes to allow themselves in; and injustice to creditors, and in matters of Meum and Tuum, as what it was beneath him to be guilty of.

    Clarissa Harlowe 2006

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