Word.ws English Dictionary

unsharp

unsharp adjective: out of focus; blurry.

Adjective

unsharp (comparative more unsharp, superlative most unsharp)

  1. Out of focus; blurry.
  2. Dulled or intentionally blunt.
    • an unsharp tool

Verb

unsharp (third-person singular simple present unsharps, present participle unsharping, simple past and past participle unsharped)

  1. (transitive) To sharpen (an image) by creating a blurred ("unsharp") negative as a mask, and then combining that mask with the original.

Synonyms of unsharp

Antonyms

Forms of unsharp

Adjective
comparativemore unsharp
superlativemost unsharp
Verb
third-person singular presentunsharps
present participleunsharping
past participleunsharped
pastunsharped

Origin of unsharp

From Middle English *unscharp, from Old English unsċearp, from Proto-West Germanic *unskarp, from Proto-Germanic *unskarpaz, equivalent to un- + sharp. Cognate with Saterland Frisian uunskäärp (“unsharp”), West Frisian ûnskerp (“unsharp”), Dutch onscherp (“unsharp”), German Low German unscharp (“unsharp”), German unscharf (“unsharp”), Danish uskarp (“unsharp”), Swedish oskarp (“unsharp”), Norwegian uskarp (“unsharp”).

Words formed from unsharp

Questions about unsharp

What does unsharp mean?
Unsharp means out of focus; blurry.
What part of speech is unsharp?
Unsharp can be an adjective or a verb.

Words near unsharp in the dictionary

  1. unshared
  2. unsharedness
  3. unshares
  4. unsharing
  5. unsharklike
  6. unsharp
  7. unsharped
  8. unsharpen
  9. unsharpenable
  10. unsharpened
  11. unsharpening

Source and license

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