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impatient

adjectivecommon in dialogue

  • //ɪmˈpeɪʃənt//

Restless, short of temper, and intolerant of delays.

adjective

  1. 1

    Restless, short of temper, and intolerant of delays.

    She dances when she becomes impatient.

    The impatient man will not give himself time to be informed of the matter that lies before him.

  2. 2

    Anxious and eager, especially to begin or have something.

    For, if (ſaid he) you throw among five Yahoos as much Food as would be ſufficient for fifty, they will, inſtead of eating peaceably, fall together by the ears, each ſingle one impatient to have all to itſelf; […]

  3. 3

    obsoleteNot to be borne; unendurable.

    Dismayed with so defperate deadly wound, And eke impatient of unwonted payne, He lowdly bray'd with beastly yelling sownd

  4. 4

    Prompted by, or exhibiting, impatience.

    impatient speeches or replies

    What, will you tear / Impatient answers from my gentle tongue?

Etymology

From Old French impacient (modern French impatient), from Latin impatiēns. By surface analysis, im- + patient.

Forms

comparative
more impatient
superlative
most impatient
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).