Word.ws English Dictionary

inartful

inartful adjective: awkwardly expressed but not necessarily untrue; ill-phrased; inexpedient.

Adjective

inartful (comparative more inartful, superlative most inartful)

  1. Awkwardly expressed but not necessarily untrue; ill-phrased; inexpedient
    • The fact that […] General Clark said something that was inartful about John McCain, I don’t think is what is keeping Ohioans up at night.2008, Barack Obama, prepared statement, quoted in William Safire, “Inartful”, The New York Times Magazine, 2008 July 20
    Synonyms:
    clumsy, unartful

Synonyms of inartful

Forms of inartful

comparativemore inartful
superlativemost inartful

Origin of inartful

Alteration of earlier unartful, equivalent to in- + artful.

Words formed from inartful

Questions about inartful

What does inartful mean?
Inartful means awkwardly expressed but not necessarily untrue; ill-phrased; inexpedient.
What part of speech is inartful?
Inartful is an adjective.

Words near inartful in the dictionary

  1. inarguably
  2. inari
  3. Inari Sami
  4. inarizushi
  5. inarm
  6. inartful
  7. inartfully
  8. inartfulness
  9. inarticulability
  10. inarticulable
  11. inarticulacies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: inartful (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.

Last updated:

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