Word.ws English Dictionary

inadequate

Syllables: in·ad·e·quate/ɪnˈædəkwɪt/

inadequate adjective: not adequate; lacking in quality or quantity required; insufficient for a purpose.

Adjective

inadequate (comparative more inadequate, superlative most inadequate)

  1. Not adequate; lacking in quality or quantity required; insufficient for a purpose.
    • inadequate resources
    • inadequate representation

Noun

inadequate (plural inadequates)

  1. A person who is inadequate.
    • Thus, at some critical level of unemployment, “the unemployed” becomes a negative reference group of inadequates, the hardcore unemployed […]2012, Norman T. Feather, The Psychological Impact of Unemployment

inadequate meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

inadequate in Hindi

Not adequate
अपर्याप्त aparyāpt

inadequate in Tamil

பற்றாத, போதாத

inadequate in Urdu

ناکافی

inadequate in Bengali

অপর্যাপ্ত, কম, অপ্রতুল, অযোগ্য
More languagesFewer languages
inadequate in Malayalam
അപര്യാപ്തം, കുറവായ, പോരാത്ത, ദുർല്ലഭമായ
inadequate in Kannada
ಸಾಕಾಗದ, ತಕ್ಕುದಲ್ಲದ, ಸಾಲದ, ಸಾಕಷ್ಟಿಲ್ಲದ
inadequate in Odia
କମ୍ kam
inadequate in Sanskrit
अपर्याप्त aparyāpta
inadequate in Tagalog
disapat
inadequate in Indonesian
inadekuat

Examples of inadequate in a sentence

  • I wondered with what inadequate words I could try to console her.1971, Lyndon Johnson, “The Beginning”, in The Vantage Point, Holt, Reinhart & Winston, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 12:
  • By the 21st century, the clearly inadequate facilities needed to be replaced, so the area was rebuilt and modernised between 2009-13 as part of regeneration efforts focused upon the wider area.2022 January 12, Paul Bigland, “Fab Four: the nation's finest stations: Wakefield Kirkgate”, in RAIL, number 948, page 28:
  • “Russia is a terrorist country whose leader is an inadequate person”.2023 June 29, Metro, London, page 13, column 5:

All 40 example sentences with inadequate

Synonyms of inadequate

18 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of inadequate

Forms of inadequate

Adjective
comparativemore inadequate
superlativemost inadequate
alternative form (archaic)inadæquate
Noun
pluralinadequates

Origin of inadequate

From in- + adequate.

Words formed from inadequate

Questions about inadequate

What does inadequate mean?
Inadequate means not adequate; lacking in quality or quantity required; insufficient for a purpose.
What is inadequate in Hindi?
Inadequate in Hindi is अपर्याप्त (aparyāpt). See Inadequate meaning in Hindi.
How do you use inadequate in a sentence?
I wondered with what inadequate words I could try to console her.
What part of speech is inadequate?
Inadequate can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce inadequate?
Inadequate is pronounced /ɪnˈædəkwɪt/.

Words near inadequate in the dictionary

  1. inadept
  2. inadeptly
  3. inadeptness
  4. inadequacies
  5. inadequacy
  6. inadequate
  7. inadequately
  8. inadequateness
  9. inadequatenesses
  10. inadequates
  11. inadequation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: inadequate (page history and authors); inadequate (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); inadequate (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Inadequate (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); inadequate (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); inadequate (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); କମ୍ (Odia) (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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Cite this entry: “inadequate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/inadequate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.