All 4 Uses of
congenial
in
Jane Eyre
- It must have been most irksome to find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand in the stead of a parent to a strange child she could not love, and to see an uncongenial alien permanently intruded on her own family group.†
p. 20.4uncongenial = 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.
- When we went in, and I had removed her bonnet and coat, I took her on my knee; kept her there an hour, allowing her to prattle as she liked: not rebuking even some little freedoms and trivialities into which she was apt to stray when much noticed, and which betrayed in her a superficiality of character, inherited probably from her mother, hardly congenial to an English mind.†
p. 170.8 *congenial = agreeable or compatible
- There was a reviving pleasure in this intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me for the first time — the pleasure arising from perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and principles.†
p. 402.3congeniality = agreeableness (friendliness)
- In the village school I found you could perform well, punctually, uprightly, labour uncongenial to your habits and inclinations; I saw you could perform it with capacity and tact: you could win while you controlled.†
p. 465.4uncongenial = 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