Word.ws English Dictionary

infelicitous

/ˌɪn.fəˈlɪs.ɪ.təs/US/ˌɪn.fəˈlɪs.ɪ.təs/

infelicitous adjective: unhappy or unfortunate.

Adjective

infelicitous (comparative more infelicitous, superlative most infelicitous)

  1. Unhappy or unfortunate.
    • My last run this month is an amazing performance of an "A2/3" Pacific, No. 60524, Herringbone (could there possibly be a more infelicitous name for a locomotive than this, let alone for the unhappy horse which first had to bear it?), […].1953 December, Cecil J. Allen, “British Locomotive Performance and Performance”, in Railway Magazine, page 838
    • If leading a "dog's life" be considered a peculiar phase of human misery, the life of a Boys' Dog is still more infelicitous.1973, Bret Harte, “A Boy's Dog”, in Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Sketches
    Synonyms:
    sad, unlucky
  2. Inappropriate or awkward; not well said, expressed, or done.
    • "Now, you've got just grounds for shooting me," he said gaily, and instantly regretted his infelicitous remark.1909, William MacLeod Raine, “chapter 24”, in Ridgway of Montana
  3. Of a sentence or utterance: not semantically and pragmatically coherent.

infelicitous meaning in Urdu and Malayalam

infelicitous in Urdu

غیرمناسب, ناخوش

infelicitous in Malayalam

inappropriate, unfortunate, unsuitable
അമംഗളകരമായ, അധന്യ, അശുഭകരമായ, നിർഭാഗ്യകരമായ, ഭാഗ്യഹീനമായ, ഹതഭാഗ്യമായ

Synonyms of infelicitous

Forms of infelicitous

comparativemore infelicitous
superlativemost infelicitous

Origin of infelicitous

From in- + felicitous.

Words formed from infelicitous

Questions about infelicitous

What does infelicitous mean?
Infelicitous means unhappy or unfortunate.
What is infelicitous in Urdu?
Infelicitous in Urdu is غیرمناسب, ناخوش. See Infelicitous meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is infelicitous?
Infelicitous is an adjective.
How do you pronounce infelicitous?
Infelicitous is pronounced /ˌɪn.fəˈlɪs.ɪ.təs/ (UK).

Words near infelicitous in the dictionary

  1. infeftment
  2. infeftments
  3. infefts
  4. infelicific
  5. infelicities
  6. infelicitous
  7. infelicitously
  8. infelicitousness
  9. infelicity
  10. infell
  11. infelonious

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: infelicitous (page history and authors); infelicitous (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); infelicitous (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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: “infelicitous.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/infelicitous. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.