1597. Hooker, Eccl. Pol., V. xxxviii. § 3. Wanton, or light or vnsuteable harmonie, such as only pleaseth the eare.
1601. Shaks., All’s Well, I. i. 170. Virginitie like an olde Courtier, weares her cap out of fashion, richly suted, but vnsuteable.
1665. Boyle, Occas. Refl., I. iii. I make him but very unsuitable Returns for the Blessings … I have receiv’d.
1671. Milton, P. R., III. 132. Hard recompence, unsutable return For so much good, so much beneficence.
1831. G. P. R. James, Phil. Augustus, II. iv. At so unsuitable an hour.
1869. Tozer, Highl. Turkey, II. 346. The expression … would hardly appear unsuitable.
1890. ‘R. Boldrewood,’ Col. Reformer (1891), 216. He thought … him not wholly unsuitable as a companion.
b. Const. to or for.
a. 1586. Sidney, Arcadia, III. xxiii. An unkinde answere,… but not unsutable to the rest of your behaviour.
1601. Shaks., Twel. N., II. v. 222. Hee will smile vpon her, which will now be so vnsuteable to her disposition,… that [etc.].
1651. Hobbes, Leviath., III. xlii. 293. Their ordinary maintenance was not unsuitable to their employment.
1768–74. Tucker, Lt. Nat. (1834), II. 547. If our devotion be overstrained it becomes unsuitable for practice.
1780. Mirror, No. 94. A train of thinking … neither unpleasing nor unsuitable to the character of a rational being.
a. 1834. Coleridge, Lit. Rem. (1838), III. 382. Never did so wise a man adopt means so unsuitable to his end.
1879. Harlan, Eyesight, ix. 131. Ground-glass globes are condemned … as unsuitable for school purposes.
