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forbidding

[fer-bid-ing, fawr-]

Example Sentences Origin

adjective

grim; unfriendly; hostile; sinister: his forbidding countenance.

dangerous; threatening: forbidding clouds; forbidding cliffs.

Origin:
1710–15; forbid + -ing²

Related forms

for·bid·ding·ly, adverb

for·bid·ding·ness, noun

un·for·bid·ding, adjective

Can be confused: forbidding, foreboding.

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Forbidding is always a great word to know.

So is flibbertigibbet. Does it mean:

a chattering or flighty, light-headed person.

a gadget; dingus; thingumbob.

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Example Sentences

On his birthday, he preferred that the day go unnoticed, forbidding his mother from planning even the smallest celebration.

Forbidding everyone who disagrees with you from speaking is no solution to any problem.

Yet the climate for private investment is forbidding.

EXPAND

On his birthday, he preferred that the day go unnoticed, forbidding his mother from planning even the smallest celebration.

Forbidding everyone who disagrees with you from speaking is no solution to any problem.

Yet the climate for private investment is forbidding.

Such missions could even find signs of the water, and possible life, that may lie hidden beneath the planet's forbidding exterior.

Its forbidding climate and low average education levels are disincentives for private investment.

Feel free to make your own sarcastic remark about forbidding hand sanitizers in hospitals.

It is not always that school children are benefited by a rule forbidding corporal punishment.

It makes me a little nervous to hear my colleagues posting about forbidding certain types of speech.

The obstacles to fundamental change are so forbidding that leaders will always be tempted to try to muddle through.

Afar tribeswomen extract water from this forbidding landscape by building small stone towers over the geothermal vents.

In recent legal cases in the two countries, courts have interpreted national laws as forbidding basic research on primates.

There's the problem of trying to infiltrate a culture, or a subculture, that is closed and kind of forbidding.

Now they are aiming at virtual mergers, despite national rules forbidding foreign ownership.

The earliest arrivals probably had no choice-overcrowding elsewhere may have forced them into this forbidding environment.

Now the burden of proof is on physicists to prove there must be a law forbidding time travel.

The terrain is forbidding and, with the winter snows expected next month, so is the weather.

Learn more about the many attempts to conquer the forbidding terrain of the world's third largest ice sheet.

If a non-believer has no beliefs there's nothing forbidding him to do the immoral or unkind.

They try to read the wording of the initiative, but find it forbidding.

But for all of my overweening rationality, my world remained a dark, forbidding place beyond my control.

In one sense, that job looks less forbidding than the sound and fury suggests.

It was chiefly their forbidding habitat that accounted for the relative lack of research on bonobos.

In some cases, such as telecoms, the government is forbidding foreigners to buy more than a minority stake.

The distance was not as forbidding as the condition of the pathway in bad weather.

Mandela's movements, but forbidding her from entering.

But design students often struggle to get their minds around forbidding lines of computer code.

There's little enough of that in the world to risk forbidding such a possibility.

Amazon even has a clause in its terms of service forbidding generic readers.

Officials hope taxpayers find the new form less forbidding than the.

By the same logic, states may not make laws forbidding murder, since murder is not specifically forbidden by the.

And he can be a wooden campaigner, dressing in forbidding suits and struggling to chit-chat.

Glas-Steagal was the last law forbidding derivatives.

The best ones can be a little difficult, even forbidding.

Try forbidding all religious expressions in first-person essays and see where that gets you.

Sheer scale is not all that is forbidding about the book.

By forbidding the sale of sweets by other than regular.

Part of the magic, though, depends on harvesting value from ever more diffuse stocks in ever more remote and forbidding regions.

To the right of the forbidding cliffs, a rocky slope tumbled past ice-clogged clefts to a harsh gravel shoreline.

Preventing speech by a corporation does not mean forbidding individuals from saying anything.

He is a forbidding man, a man without a molecule out of place, a person capable of composure even when exhausted.

They are reacting to the onslaught of change by hardening, by forbidding and enforcing, thus excluding more and more.

In real life, this amorphous pile is fenced by a rigid iron structure, as formal and forbidding as the shrine is loose and lumpy.

But as the gentleman in proposition has himself decried forbidding retirement until more.

It was built for the seclusion of monastic life, and it still looks forbidding and unapproachable.

COLLAPSE

Dictionary.com Unabridged

verb (used with object), -bade or -bad or -bid, -bid·den or -bid, -bid·ding.

to command (a person) not to do something, have something, etc., or not to enter some place: to forbid him entry to the house.

to prohibit (something); make a rule or law against: to forbid the use of lipstick; to forbid smoking.

to hinder or prevent; make impossible.

to exclude; bar: Burlesque is forbidden in many cities.

Origin:
before 1000; Middle English forbeden, Old English forbēodan. See for-, bid¹

Related forms

for·bid·der, noun

Can be confused: forbade, forbid, forbidden, forebode (see synonym note at the current entry).

Synonyms
1, 2. interdict. Forbid, inhibit, prohibit, taboo indicate a command to refrain from some action. Forbid, a common and familiar word, usually denotes a direct or personal command of this sort: I forbid you to go. It was useless to forbid children to play in the park. Inhibit implies a checking or hindering of impulses by the mind, sometimes involuntarily: to inhibit one's desires; His responsiveness was inhibited by extreme shyness. Prohibit, a formal or legal word, means usually to forbid by official edict, enactment, or the like: to prohibit the sale of liquor. Taboo, primarily associated with primitive superstition, means to prohibit by common disapproval and by social custom: to taboo a subject in polite conversation. 3. preclude, stop, obviate, deter.

Link To forbidding

Collins

World English Dictionary

forbidding (fəˈbɪdɪŋ)

—*adj*
1.	hostile or unfriendly
2.	dangerous or ominous

for'biddingly

—*adv*

for'biddingness

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

forbid

O.E. forbeodan, from for- "against" + beodan "to command" (see bid). Common Gmc. compound (cf. Du. verbieden, O.H.G. farbiotan, Ger. verbieten, Goth. faurbiudan). Related: Forbade; forbidden. Forbidding "uninviting" first recorded 1712.

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