mistrustful.

Doubting another's motives or reliability and therefore reluctant to trust.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• mistrustful attitude
• mistrustful of assurances

On the page

The residents remained mistrustful of assurances after the earlier failures.

Usage notes

Primary category: psychology / human behavior. Forms: Comparative more mistrustful; superlative most mistrustful when comparison is meaningful. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Writing functions: character, behavior. Commonness: moderately common.