Word.ws English Dictionary

unpromise

unpromise noun: lack of promise; poor prospects; unpromising outlook.

Noun

unpromise (usually uncountable, plural unpromises)

  1. (usually) Lack of promise; poor prospects; unpromising outlook.
    • So I was a writer of early unpromise. All my stories from the age of twelve until I was at least twenty-two were pretty bad.2004, Ray Bradbury, Steven L. Aggelis, Conversations with Ray Bradbury, page 25
    • The resulting brew did not smell promising, and the taste more than lived up to the unpromise.2009, Liza Dalby, East Wind Melts the Ice: A Memoir Through the Seasons, page 222

Verb

unpromise (third-person singular simple present unpromises, present participle unpromising, simple past and past participle unpromised)

  1. (transitive) To revoke or annul (something promised before).
    • Promises are no fetters: with that tongue
      Thy promise past, unpromise it again.1605, George Chapman, All Fools
    • "But I promised Annie we'd take them, Joseph." " Well , you're just going to have to unpromise her!"2015, Ruth Price, Before An Amish Country Calamity

Examples of unpromise in a sentence

  • I had God's promise that he was there to bring us into the land of promises, or unpromises.2016, Dr. Minerva Santerre, A Bridge That Hugged Tomorrow:
  • It wouldn't be a promise if you could just unpromise it.2024, Sylvia Bishop ·, On Silver Tides:

Forms of unpromise

Noun
pluralunpromises
Verb
third-person singular presentunpromises
present participleunpromising
past participleunpromised
pastunpromised

Origin of unpromise

From un- + promise.

Questions about unpromise

What does unpromise mean?
Unpromise means lack of promise; poor prospects; unpromising outlook.
How do you use unpromise in a sentence?
I had God's promise that he was there to bring us into the land of promises, or unpromises.
What part of speech is unpromise?
Unpromise can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of unpromise?
The plural of unpromise is unpromises.

Words near unpromise in the dictionary

  1. unprolonged
  2. unpromisable
  3. unpromiscuity
  4. unpromiscuous
  5. unpromiscuously
  6. unpromise
  7. unpromised
  8. unpromises
  9. unpromising
  10. unpromisingly
  11. unpromisingness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unpromise (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: “unpromise.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unpromise. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.