Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use unseemly in a sentence

12 example sentences · adjective, adverb

Unseemly means inconsistent with established standards of good form or taste. Example: “He was drunk and made some very unseemly comments.”

Examples of unseemly by meaning

adjectiveInconsistent with established standards of good form or taste.

  • He was drunk and made some very unseemly comments.
  • Many men, women and children, clothed in bright raiment for the Sabbath, saw with a faint flicker of interest and surprise a very white man on a trishaw, and the driver pedalling with unseemly haste.1958, Anthony Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket (The Malayan Trilogy), London: Heinemann, page 192
  • This capability has led to unseemly and inaccurate rumors about asari promiscuity.2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Asari Codex entry

More sentences with unseemly

  • Even though we mostly now see people onscreen, by June we may hit an unseemly Hairmageddon.2020 April 24, Jonathan Margolis, “The online solutions to lockdown grooming problems”, in Financial Times. From the entry hairmageddon
  • The unseemly business of book blurbing has been source of both humor and concern in the pages of The New Yorker.2012 April 17, Jon Michaud, “Blurb This!”, in The New Yorker. From the entry blurb
  • “Those endeavors are about to become more public; and the public is about to get a big window into the unseemly underbelly of Trumpland.”2018 December 1, Brad Reed, “Conservative writer says "underbelly of Trumpland" will be exposed”, in Salon. From the entry Trumpland
  • These days, Senator Henry Jackson, notorious for his ties with the Pentagon, has "distinguished" himself in this unseemly field for the umptiest time.1971, The Daily Review, volume 17. From the entry umptiest
  • Yet they view my arrival with a knapsack on my back with cold disapprobation, as unseemly as if I had arrived riding on a pig.1921, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “As Far as Palermo”, in Sea and Sardinia, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Seltzer, →OCLC, page 21. From the entry disapprobation
  • Hence the un-Sundaylike demeanor of the procession, for few towns hold it more unseemly to stand and stare at passers-by, especially on the Sabbath.1905, Harper's magazine. From the entry Sundaylike
  • Also a big hand for Silver Linings Playbook, an exuberant modern screwball comedy we had, in an unseemly fit of cynicism, deemed "too entertaining" for Academy voters.2013 January 11, Tom Shone, The Guardian. From the entry hand
  • "Testing the waters" is a veil for what candidates do in the years when it's too unseemly to be seen actually running for president. . . .2006 December 5, Ron Elving, “Declaring for President is a Dance of Seven Veils”, in National Public Radio, US, retrieved 27 Sep 2015. From the entry dance of the seven veils
  • But just now she felt that there was something flippant and unseemly in talking such fantastic rubbish: dreams seemed out of place when reality was so heartbreaking.1933, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], chapter II, in The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons…. From the entry rubbish

Meaning of unseemly

  1. adjective Inconsistent with established standards of good form or taste.
  2. adverb In an unseemly manner.

Full definition of unseemly

Questions about unseemly in a sentence

How do you use unseemly in a sentence?
Unseemly is used as an adjective and adverb. For example: “He was drunk and made some very unseemly comments.”
What is a short sentence with unseemly?
“He was drunk and made some very unseemly comments.”
What does unseemly mean?
Unseemly means inconsistent with established standards of good form or taste.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unseemly (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 unseemly in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/unseemly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.