Other forms: cynically, cynic, cynicism
A cynical person assumes the selfish reason is the real one. You say you gave to charity; they wonder what it did for your tax bill.
It is not the same as being negative or gloomy. A cynic can be cheerful — they simply take it as settled that everybody is working an angle, and they are often funny about it. The noun is cynic, the state is cynicism, and the word is close to weary: people usually become cynical about something after years of it, rather than starting out that way.
1adjectivecynicalBelieving that people act only out of self-interest.~89%
“Thirty years in politics had left him thoroughly cynical.”
synonyms: distrustful, jaded
2adjectivedoneDone in a calculated way, without caring who it hurts.~11%
“It was a cynical move, timed for the week nobody was watching.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 86 sentences found in the wild and placed 80 of them on a sense (6 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
CYN-ical → SIN-ical
He looks at everyone through glasses that show him the sin in them. You hand back a lost wallet, and through the glasses all he can see is you counting the reward you must be after.
hooks ontosin
From the Cynics, a school of Greek philosophers whose name came from the word for dog. They were called dog-like for living rough and barking the truth at powerful people, and the modern sense kept the bite.
Ancient Greek
κυνικός — doglike
English, today
cynical
Originated 1542, from cynicus<t:Cynic + al. by surface analysis, cynic + -al. In reference to dogs, with allusion to the ultimate etymology (Ancient Greek κυνικός* (“doglike”)).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA