Sinister means quietly promising that something evil is near. A sinister figure, a sinister silence, something sinister about it.
The quietness is essential: sinister is a suggestion rather than a threat, which is why it suits shadows, hints and unexplained noises. In heraldry, sinister means the left side of a shield, and bar sinister was once a supposed mark of illegitimacy. Note that the word comes from the Latin for left, and that the long association of left-handedness with bad luck is preserved in it exactly.
1adjectivesinisterQuietly promising that something evil is near.
“There was something sinister about the way he smiled at the children.”
synonyms: menacing, ominous
sinister is a quality of threat.
Also accepted in games: menacing
Latin sinister means left. Roman augury treated signs on the left as unlucky, and the word carried the superstition into every language that borrowed it — the same prejudice survives in the French gauche and the English dexterity.
Old French
senestre
Middle English
sinistre — unlucky
English, today
sinister
Built from
From Middle English sinistre (“unlucky”), from Old French senestre. From Middle English sinistre (“unlucky”), from Old French senestre, sinistre (“left”), from Latin sinister (“left hand”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA