Unenviable meaning

The population was of a very heterogeneous character, but mainly of an undesirable class of Levantines; this with the damp heat and the dirt and noise of the incessant coaling operations gave the town an unenviable reputation.

The coast lands are unhealthy and have earned for Sierra Leone the unenviable reputation of being "the white man's grave."

These forests enjoyed until quite recent times an unenviable notoriety as the campingground and lurking-place of footpads and other disorderly characters.

The Basuto acquired an unenviable notoriety as a race of bold cattle lifters and raiders, and the emigrant Boers found them extremely troublesome neighbours.

His university training was supplemented (1714) by a continental tour, untrammelled by a governor; at the Hague his ambition for the applause awarded to adventure made a gamester of him, and at Paris he began, from the same motive, that worship of the conventional Venus, the serious inculcation of which has earned for him the largest and most unenviable part of his reputation.