Word.ws English Dictionary

unshepherdly

unshepherdly adjective: not shepherdly.

Adjective

unshepherdly (comparative more unshepherdly, superlative most unshepherdly)

  1. Not shepherdly.
    • No doubt a good deal could be said about the botany of a single blade of grass, but the flock is starving whilst the green pastures are interdicted by the fluent but most unshepherdly botanist.1883, Joseph Parker, The People's Bible: Discourses upon Holy Scripture, volume XXIII, page 313
    • [Bo Peep] is the tale of one who is originally a merely unfortunate shepherd but who soon becomes a wilful and deliberate loser of sheep, an unshepherdly shepherd.1998, David J. A. Clines, “The History of Bo Peep: An Agricultural Employee's Tragedy in Contemporary Literary Perspective”, in On the Way to Postmodernism: Old Testament Essays 1967-1998, volume 2...

Examples of unshepherdly in a sentence

  • Beginning with the opening command to Ezekiel to prophesy to the shepherds of Israel, the message is a tirade against their unshepherdly oppression of sheep who are now scattered without shepherds.2009, John W. Olley, Ezekiel: A Commentary based on Iezekiēl in Codex Vaticanus, page 468:
  • The old woman walked behind them waving them on like a shepherd, but cackling in the most unshepherdly manner.2015, Robert Denethon, Steam Submarine: Into Ultima Thule, page 153:

Forms of unshepherdly

comparativemore unshepherdly
superlativemost unshepherdly

Origin of unshepherdly

From un- + shepherdly.

Questions about unshepherdly

What does unshepherdly mean?
Unshepherdly means not shepherdly.
How do you use unshepherdly in a sentence?
Beginning with the opening command to Ezekiel to prophesy to the shepherds of Israel, the message is a tirade against their unshepherdly oppression of sheep who are now scattered without shepherds.
What part of speech is unshepherdly?
Unshepherdly is an adjective.

Words near unshepherdly in the dictionary

  1. unshelves
  2. unshelving
  3. unshent
  4. unshepherded
  5. unshepherdlike
  6. unshepherdly
  7. unshewn
  8. unshield
  9. unshieldable
  10. unshielded
  11. unshielding

Source and license

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