a. [UN-1 7 and 5 b.] Not social; not inclined for, adapted to, or fond of society: a. Of persons (or animals).
1731. A. Hill, Adv. Poets, Ep. p. vii. Even Tartary, uncultivated, and unsocial, as she is, has given the World a Tamerlane.
1758. L. Temple, Sketches (ed. 2), 67. To be perpetually wise, is forbidding, unsocial, and something that does not become human Nature.
1817. Kirby & Sp., Entomol., xvi. II. 12. Neither of these motives can operate in causing unsocial insects to congregate.
1889. Gretton, Memory’s Harkb., 298. My unsocial neighbour startled me … by gravely propounding that he [sc. Scott] was not a Christian.
transf. 1781. Cowper, Charity, 126. To give the pole the produce of the sun, And knit th’ unsocial climates into one.
b. Of habits, conditions, etc.
1734. A. Hill, On Death of Dennis, 1. Adieu! unsocial excellence! at last Thy foes are vanquish’d.
1744. Harris, Three Treat. (1765), 152. A solitary, unsocial State, can never supply tolerably the common Necessaries of Life.
1791. Boswell, Johnson, 25 June 1763. The mode of dining … at such houses in London, is … particularly unsocial.
1826. Lamb, Elia, II. Pop. Fallacies, xv. What savage unsocial nights must our ancestors have spent…!
1884. Century Mag., XXVIII. 620. The unsocial effect of the drinking habit.
c. Of disposition, temper, etc.
1739. Glover, London, 212. Benignant peace With hospitality begin to sooth Unsocial rapine, and the thirst of blood.
1775. Sheridan, Rivals, V. i. Perhaps the recollection of a deed my conscience cannot justify may haunt me in such gloomy and unsocial fits, that [etc.].
1816. Remarks Eng. Mann., 3. Our unsocial turn he ascribes to ‘that independence Britons prize too high.’
1837. Hallam, Hist. Lit., I. ii. § 15. The man himself was of too unsocial and forbidding a temper to conciliate them.
1885. Manch. Exam., 12 Feb., 4/7. The unsocial selfishness which excluded the toiling populations from their national health-giving scenes.
Hence Unsocialism.
1849. Hanna, Mem. Chalmers, II. 422. Behind all his assumed unsocialism there lay a true warm beart.
