Word.ws English Dictionary

ethically challenged

ethically challenged adjective: unethical; dishonest.

Adjective

ethically challenged (comparative more ethically challenged, superlative most ethically challenged)

  1. (euphemistic, humorous) Unethical; dishonest.

Forms of ethically challenged

comparativemore ethically challenged
superlativemost ethically challenged
alternative formethically-challenged

Origin of ethically challenged

An ironic imitation of the perceived oversensitivity of language like mentally challenged.

Questions about ethically challenged

What does ethically challenged mean?
Ethically challenged means unethical; dishonest.
What part of speech is ethically challenged?
Ethically challenged is an adjective.

Words near ethically challenged in the dictionary

  1. ethicalism
  2. ethicalisms
  3. ethicalities
  4. ethicality
  5. ethically
  6. ethically challenged
  7. ethically-challenged
  8. ethicalness
  9. ethicals
  10. ethician
  11. ethicians

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ethically challenged (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-ethically challenged.wav.

Cite this entry: “ethically challenged.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ethically_challenged. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.