Without looking at a thesaurus, would you consider gratitude and resentment to be sort of like antonyms of each other?

[luuknam]

Why or why not?

 

Regardless, feel free to ramble on about gratitude and/or resentment. Feeling like I could use more of the former and less of the latter.

[AK_Mom4]

Per my all-knowing DD14:

 

Opposite of resentment is appreciation.

Opposite of gratitude would be ingratitude.

 

Not feeling gratitude towards someone would not necessarily mean you feel resentment. You might just not feel grateful.

[jewellsmommy]

Yes, I think so. Gratitude is acknowledging the benefit a person or situation brings. Resentment is not seeing the value of a contribution and, in fact, going beyond indifference to an active negative feeling about a person or situation.

[jewellsmommy]

Per my all-knowing DD14:

 

Opposite of resentment is appreciation.  Isn't gratitude an appreciation of someone or something?

Opposite of gratitude would be ingratitude.

 

Not feeling gratitude towards someone would not necessarily mean you feel resentment. You might just not feel grateful. This is definitely true, but I don't think that it automatically precludes the above from also being true.

 

[luuknam]

Per my all-knowing DD14:

 

Opposite of resentment is appreciation.

Opposite of gratitude would be ingratitude.

 

Not feeling gratitude towards someone would not necessarily mean you feel resentment. You might just not feel grateful.

 

I said *without* using a thesaurus! ;)

 

And per two thesauri, your dd is right. That said, isn't appreciation a (near) synonym of gratitude?

[Word Nerd]

No. The opposite of gratitude (other than the obvious ingratitude) would be entitlement.

[Lolly]

I would definitely give credit for it on an assignment. Exact antonyms? maybe not. But, the right idea and meaning is there. I would most certainly not consider them wrong. Antonyms do not have to be exact opposites. You are really going for general meaning and feel. I have seen less closely related words listed in a thesaurus!

[luuknam]

I would definitely give credit for it on an assignment.

 

 

Not an assignment, but thanks anyway. :) Just trying to figure out the connection between these two in my own head.

 

 

No. The opposite of gratitude (other than the obvious ingratitude) would be entitlement.

 

 

Okay. Would resentment then be unfulfilled entitlement (as in, feeling entitled to something but not getting it, and hence feeling resentful)?

 

For the record, in my mind, I didn't think resentment and gratitude were exact antonyms, but on some level I feel there is some fairly strong (negative) connection. You can't feel gratitude and resentment about the same thing at the same time, can you? Would you have to decrease your resentment before trying to increase your gratitude? Does this all revolve around entitlement, and if so, how does one combat a feeling of entitlement? How practical is it to try to get rid of a sense of entitlement? Do we really want to go through life feeling like we deserve *nothing* and that anything that isn't bad is something to be grateful for?

 

For instance (to give an extreme example; not a situation I'm in), if a husband regularly hits his wife, etc, should she feel grateful for the rare times he says something nice to her? Wouldn't it make sense to have *some* sense of entitlement to being treated right? Are there things we *should* feel resentful about? If so, where is the line between bad resentment/entitlement and good resentment/entitlement? At what point would it be better for yourself to try to focus on gratitude, even if life isn't fair? There are always people who have it worse... so one can feel grateful that you're better off than *those* people... but then one can also feel envious of people who are better off, and resentful of your own circumstances.

[Slojo]

It's hard to feel gratitude for a person or situation you resent, so yes they are on opposite poles. But I don't quite think of them as antonyms.  Gratitude feels like it's more on the joyful/not joyful continuum, and resentment feels like it's more on the love/hate (maybe not literal love and hate) continuum, if you know what I mean. Close cousins, but not in the same immediate family. 

 

I would imagine that if one is trying to have less resentment in life, that a tool for doing that is to focus on being having more gratitude for the persons and circumstances in one's life. I would imagine if one made some real headway in the area of gratitude, that the instances in which one felt resentment would decrease. But I also think that lessening resentment in one's life has to do with increasing empathy, acceptance/letting go (of that which cannot change), perspective-taking, etc... all of which might be aided by gratitude but aren't fully captured by it either.

 

Interesting question... hope this perspective helps in having you work it out. Keep us posted. 

[luuknam]

I'm going to bed now (I'm about falling asleep sitting here, just wanting to write this down in case I forget), but it occurred to me that there is some level of powerlessness about both gratitude and resentment? Not about whether to feel grateful or resentful (that's to some degree a choice), but one doesn't typically feel grateful or resentful about one's own actions/choices. One feels that way about things outside one's direct control - things controlled by randomness, luck, fate, other people, etc. So it's something to do with how to react to the cards you're dealt. And possibly about what you feel is under your own control, or what you feel should be under your own control.

[Tsuga]

Why or why not?

 

Regardless, feel free to ramble on about gratitude and/or resentment. Feeling like I could use more of the former and less of the latter.

 

Thesauri often have somewhat vague interpretations of words so "antonym" is a pretty broad term. I guess I would not be surprised to find such words listed as antonyms in a thesaurus, no.

 

If it's the SAT or ACT or GRE, my answer is the wise answer from my GRE verbal section coach: "Don't over-think it." Me: "How can you over-think it? It's the highest standardized test of English!" Her: "You have too much faith in this test..." Vague associations are enough. They literally want to know if you understand what "grateful" means in general. They do not care how accurate a thinker you are and whether you can or will apply that to SAT vocabulary.

 

However, that has more to do with my lack of faith in the accuracy of thesauri and my belief that the SAT and GRE verbal sections are bull crap, than it has to do with my understandings of the words "gratitude" and "resentment".

 

To me, gratitude's antonym is "ingratitude" or "ungratefulness" or at most, cavalier.

 

The antonym of resentful would be appreciative or valuing.

[Sneezyone]

Gratitude, in my mind, is thankfulness which may or may not last. Resentment is a step beyond being ungrateful or thankless. Resentment or holding onto a grudge, is not fleeting. So, no, I don't see them as antonyms.

[gardenmom5]

No. The opposite of gratitude (other than the obvious ingratitude) would be entitlement.

 

I can agree with entitlement - and it breeds resentment.  so they are ancillary

I know a woman who was very resentful when she had financial problems that her father didn't give her money (he apparently didn't have anyway). 

so, she felt entitled to the money he didn't have, and grew resentful when she didn't get it.  that resentment festered for decades.

 

but unappreciative (which someone also said) also reflects a lack of gratitude.

[Guest]

"entitlement" to me has a negative connotation. It has a feeling of believing you should be given some perk that you don't necessarily deserve to be given. So, if my newly-driving teen was indignant that I did not buy him a new car, he is displaying at attitude of entitlement - he thinks a new car should simply be given to him because he is marvelous. If he continued to believe he was entitled to a new car and I continued to not buy one, he might feel resentful. It certainly does suggest that there is not gratitude co-existing. One can only build resentment about what is not forthcoming while not being grateful for what one does have.

 

I don't see "entitlement" to being treated with a basic level of dignity the same way.

[El...]

Resentment happens when I want something, am denied/ignored, and value that thing/response more than the rest of the relationship.  It is anger gone embedded and emerges in unfortunate, surprising ways. 

 

That does not mean the thing I want is not a legitimate requirement.  If my spouse is crabby and rude to me for a long time, and I develop a resentful streak about that, it was not wrong for me to want to be treated more courteously. 

 

It might be, however, that they can't give me what I want.  Resentment works fine as a warning of relationship trouble, but it doesn't fix anything.  If I want what I want more than I want to build up the relationship, something's gonna break down. 

 

I think the opposite of resentment is actually forgiveness.

 

Gratitude means I'm paying attention to something I'm receiving, and am feeling a reinforcing thankfulness for the relationship that allows the gift.  If my spouse is under horrible stress, I can be grateful when I recognize the attention and help he gives me, and even more so when I realize the cost to him under his stress load. 

 

Interesting concept!

[Ausmumof3]

Opposite of gratitude is ingratitude.

 

I think of resentment more as a feeling you have to something bad that happened to you, so I would almost think of the opposite as forgiveness or at least moving on.

 

I also think it's possible to mix the feelings. There are a few things I feel resentful about from my childhood but overall I feel huge gratitude to my parents for what they did. Even more so with my own kids.