sinister

• sinistre (obsolete)

From Middle English sinistre (“unlucky”), from Old French sinistra (“left”), from Latin sinestra (“left hand”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈsɪnɪstə/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈsɪnɪstɚ/

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• Accented on the middle syllable by the older poets, such as Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden.

sinister (comparative more sinister, superlative most sinister)

1. Inauspicious, ominous, unlucky, illegitimate (as in bar sinister).
   • (Can we date this quote?) Ben Jonson

     All the several ills that visit earth, / Brought forth by night, with a sinister birth.

   • 1922, Michael Arlen, “1/5/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days‎:

     And in the meanwhile, Society shivered a little feverishly, filled now with the scions of those who had come over with the Jewish and American Conquests. Escutcheons were becoming valueless, how sinister soever the blots and clots upon them.

2. Evil or seemingly evil; indicating lurking danger or harm.

   sinister influences

   the sinister atmosphere of the crypt

3. Of the left side.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Shakespeare

     Here on his sinister cheek.

   • (Can we date this quote?) William Shakespeare

     My mother's blood / Runs on the dexter cheek, and this sinister / Bounds in my father's.

   • 1911, Saki, ‘The Unrest-Cure’, The Chronicles of Clovis:

     Before the train had stopped he had decorated his sinister shirt-cuff with the inscription, ‘J. P. Huddle, The Warren, Tilfield, near Slowborough.’

4. (heraldry) On the left side of a shield from the wearer's standpoint, and the right side to the viewer.
5. (obsolete) Wrong, as springing from indirection or obliquity; perverse; dishonest.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Francis Bacon

     Nimble and sinister tricks and shifts.

   • (Can we date this quote?) South

     He scorns to undermine another's interest by any sinister or inferior arts.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Sir Walter Scott

     He read in their looks […] sinister intentions directed particularly toward himself.

• (of the right side): dexter
• (heraldry): dexter

• insister, resistin, sinistre

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sinister (comparative sinisterder, superlative sinisterst)

1. sinister

Uncertain origin, but possibly from a euphemism from the same Proto-Indo-European root as Sanskrit सनीयान् (sanīyān, “more useful, more advantageous”).[1]

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /siˈnis.ter/, [sɪˈnɪs.tɛr]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /siˈnis.ter/

sinister (feminine sinistra, neuter sinistrum); first/second-declension adjective (nominative masculine singular in -er)

1. left

   Synonyms: laevus, scaevus

   Antonym: dexter

2. perverse, bad; or adverse, hostile
   • 1st BC, Virgilius

     mores sinistri

     arboribus Notus sinister

3. (religion) auspicious (for Romans) or inauspicious (for Greeks)
   • 1st BC, Virgilius

     sinistra cornix, good omen

   • 2nd century, Apuleius

     sinistro pede profectus, started with bad omen

First/second-declension adjective (nominative masculine singular in -er).

• sinister in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• sinister in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• Castiglioni-Mariotti, IL