Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use unprepared in a sentence

22 example sentences · adjective, noun

Unprepared means not prepared; caught by surprise. Example: “The castle was unprepared for the assault.”

Examples of unprepared by meaning

adjectiveNot prepared; caught by surprise.

  • The castle was unprepared for the assault.
  • It was only being quite unprepared that landed you in that mess before. ‘In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king’.”1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954
  • I was unprepared for the change in attire and started slightly when the alectryomancer reappeared.1985, Cathleen Jordan, Alfred Hitchcock's no harm undone, page 113

nounA black mark given to a pupil who arrives at a lesson without the necessary items or preparation.

  • "He's got another rule: Whenever he gets three unprepareds in a row, he leaves the classroom."1983, Ronald B. Lansing, Skylarks and lecterns: a law school charter, page 116

More sentences with unprepared

  • You've got to think ahead so as not to be unprepared.From the entry ahead
  • The team was so unprepared that the way it played was just gruesome.From the entry gruesome
  • The unforgiving Arctic climate makes short work of the unprepared.From the entry unforgiving
  • He shakes his head, feeling out of place, unprepared for this hecticness.2023, Santanu Bhattacharya, One Small Voice, Fig Tree, page 139. From the entry hecticness
  • The cities of Aşgabat and Krasnovodsk were singled out as being wholly unprepared.2018 May 19, Victoria Clement, “From the ABCs to the ABCs of Communism, 1930–1953”, in Learning to Become Turkmen: Literacy, Language, and…. From the entry Aşgabat
  • In those photos of her wandering around Capitol Hill to meet the senators, she looked unprepared.2008, Willie Brown, Basic Brown: My Life and our Times. From the entry corporate nun
  • They realized that they were caught flat-footed, unprepared to confront Al Qaeda terrorists.2004 June 22, Rush Holt, Suggested Remarks for Rep. Rush Holt: Is American Security Being Lost in Translation?, National Language…. From the entry Sputnik moment
  • The poem abounds in passages that will leave an unprepared audience bewildered.1999, Seamus Heaney, “Introduction”, in Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page xiii. From the entry readerly
  • It was a clumsy, side-handed, chopping blow, but Louis was unprepared for it.1983, Stephen King, Pet Sematary. From the entry side-handed
  • Claire was unprepared for Tino's panicked separation from his parents, which had resulted in tornadoesque destruction of the front office.2018, Ben Springer, Happy Kids Don′t Punch You in the Face. From the entry tornadoesque
  • The other issue is that as a nation and a society, we are woefully unprepared for the coming jobpocalypse.2018 July 19, Broke-Ass Stuart, “Note to tech industry: How about asking, ‘Should we do this?’”, in San Francisco Examiner. From the entry jobpocalypse
  • All of a sudden, as a naval officer, he had responsibilities for lives and property for which he was totally unprepared.2007, Francis L. Brannigan, Glenn P. Corbett, Brannigan's Building Construction for the Fire Service, page 6. From the entry prefire
  • And then he was totally unprepared for his ring-a-ding winner.1975, Forbes - Volume 116, Issues 7-12, page 17. From the entry ring-a-ding
  • Taffy's cynophobia, expressed in spitting, growling, melancholy miauling, served to ease the awkwardness of greeting between unprepared hostess and uninvited guest.1961, Xavier Herbert, Soldiers' Women, Netley, SA: Fontana Books, published 1978, page 337. From the entry cynophobia
  • But with decades of underinvestment leaving the UK dismally unprepared to handle further heatwaves, is it time to rethink the progressive position on air con?2026 June 29, Phineas Harper, “Not just for rich people: the progressive case for air conditioning”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The…. From the entry air con
  • Both the desert and the sea can also be pitiless to the lazy, the unprepared, the unwary traveler who ventures upon them.1996, Ella Maillart, “Foreward”, in The Alluring Target, Trackless Sands Press, →ISBN, page xiii. From the entry illimitable
  • I thought more of him for that, not less, having had many hours of my life wasted by lackwits unprepared for the audiences they had gained with me.2010, H. N. Turteltaub, Justinian. From the entry foreready
  • Often, the job will throw you a curly problem that will cause the unprepared to fail, so it is best to prepare an investigative plan before starting work.2005, Chris Cooper, Behind the Private Eye: The Private Investigator's Secrets, →ISBN, page 176. From the entry curly

Meaning of unprepared

  1. adjective Not prepared; caught by surprise.
  2. noun A black mark given to a pupil who arrives at a lesson without the necessary items or preparation.

Full definition of unprepared

Questions about unprepared in a sentence

How do you use unprepared in a sentence?
Unprepared is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “The castle was unprepared for the assault.”
What is a short sentence with unprepared?
“The castle was unprepared for the assault.”
What does unprepared mean?
Unprepared means not prepared; caught by surprise.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unprepared (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use unprepared in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/unprepared. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.