Word.ws English Dictionary

unsavoury

unsavoury is the alternative spelling of unsavory.

Meaning of unsavory

Adjective

unsavory (comparative more unsavory, superlative most unsavory)

  1. (US) Not savory; without flavor.
  2. (US) Of bad taste; distasteful.
    • The little Pieces of Beef vvere like Plums in our Hodg-podg. Indeed 'tvvas not fit to be eaten any other vvay; for tho' it did not ſtink, yet it vvas very unſavory and black, vvithout the leaſt ſign of Fat in it: […]1699, William Dampier, chapter I, in Voyages and Descriptions. Vol. II. […], London: […] James Knapton, […], →OCLC, part II (Mr. Dampier’s Voyages to the Bay of Campeachy), page 38
  3. (US) Making an activity undesirable.
  4. (US) Disreputable, not respectable, of questionable moral character.
    • His unsavory reputation as a mobster came back to haunt him when he ran for mayor of New York.

Forms of unsavoury

comparativemore unsavoury
superlativemost unsavoury

Origin of unsavoury

From un- + savoury.

Words formed from unsavoury

Questions about unsavoury

What is unsavoury the alternative spelling of?
Unsavoury is the alternative spelling of unsavory.

Words near unsavoury in the dictionary

  1. unsavoriness
  2. unsavory
  3. unsavoured
  4. unsavourily
  5. unsavouriness
  6. unsavoury
  7. unsavvy
  8. unsaw
  9. unsawable
  10. unsawed
  11. unsawn

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unsavoury (page history and authors); unsavory (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-unsavoury.wav.

Cite this entry: “unsavoury.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unsavoury. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.