unprepossessing
unprepossessing adjective: unimpressive or unremarkable; dull and ordinary; nondescript.
Adjective
unprepossessing (comparative more unprepossessing, superlative most unprepossessing)
- Unimpressive or unremarkable; dull and ordinary; nondescript.
- One of these unseen observers, a gentleman, was youthful, and had an air of high breeding and refinement, and a face marked with intellect, though otherwise of unprepossessing aspect.1838, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sylph Etherege
- She drew up a chamois-skin bag, of an unprepossessing mouse colour, and emptied out a roll of bills.1902, Myrtle Reed, chapter 4, in At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern
- Synonyms:
- unappealing
Examples of unprepossessing in a sentence
- Sykes, Mechanical & Electrical Engineer of the S.R., revealed how the somehat unprepossessing appearance of these train sets came about.1960 December, “The Hastings Line diesel-electric multiple units”, in Trains Illustrated, page 732:
- Sometimes movies with the most unprepossessing titles can surprise you.2017 January 12, Andy Webster, “Movie Review: Horses Under the Hood?”, in New York Times, retrieved 15 Jan 2017:
Synonyms of unprepossessing
Forms of unprepossessing
| comparative | more unprepossessing |
|---|---|
| superlative | most unprepossessing |
Origin of unprepossessing
From un- + prepossessing.
Words formed from unprepossessing
Questions about unprepossessing
- What does unprepossessing mean?
- Unprepossessing means unimpressive or unremarkable; dull and ordinary; nondescript.
- How do you use unprepossessing in a sentence?
- Sykes, Mechanical & Electrical Engineer of the S.R., revealed how the somehat unprepossessing appearance of these train sets came about.
- What part of speech is unprepossessing?
- Unprepossessing is an adjective.
Words near unprepossessing in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: unprepossessing (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: “unprepossessing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unprepossessing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.