Both Uses of
congenial
in
The Scarlet Letter
- Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilised society, a prison.†
p. 36.6 *congenial = agreeable or compatible
- It was as if a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the first, had converted the forest-land, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim and wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild and dreary, but life-long home.†
p. 56.3uncongenial = not agreeable or compatiblestandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in uncongenial means not and reverses the meaning of congenial. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
Definition:
agreeable or compatible in a positive way -- often in the context of being friendly and sociable