Word.ws English Dictionary

unworth

unworth noun: unworthiness; unworthliness; worthlessness.

Noun

unworth (uncountable)

  1. Unworthiness; unworthliness; worthlessness.
    • Woe to the People that no longer venerates, as the emblem of God himself, the aspect of Human Worth; that no longer knows what human worth and unworth is!1850, Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets
    • As the lawyer unfolded his plan the partner-clerk, as a devotee of cunning, found himself convicted of comparative unworth; with every sentence he deported himself less like Pelman the partner, shrank more and more to Joey the devil clerk.1917, Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Copper Streak Trail

Adjective (1)

unworth (comparative more unworth, superlative most unworth)

  1. (obsolete) unworthy
    • Many things might be noted on this place not ordinary , nor unworth the noting ; but I undertook not a general comment1645 March 14 (Gregorian calendar), John Milton, Tetrachordon: Expositions upon the Foure Chief Places in Scripture, which Treat of Mariage, or Nullities in Mariage. […], London: [s.n.], →OCLC

Adjective (2)

unworth (not comparable)

  1. (rare) Not worth; not deserving of.
    • This was rather pleasant, for she had to give Peter her hand, and so life became less unworth living to Peter.1894, Paul Leicester Ford, The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him
    • That would be something not unworth boasting about--that he, a sort of eighteenth-century David, should slay this modern Goliath.1916, John Lang, Jean Lang, Stories of the Border Marches

Forms of unworth

comparativemore unworth
superlativemost unworth

Origin of unworth

From Middle English unworth, unwurth, equivalent to un- + worth.

From Middle English unworth, unwurth, from Old English unweorþ, unweorþe (“unworthy, poor, mean, of low estate, worthless, contemptible, ignoble”), equivalent to un- + worth.

Words formed from unworth

Questions about unworth

What does unworth mean?
Unworth means unworthiness; unworthliness; worthlessness.
What part of speech is unworth?
Unworth can be a noun or an adjective.

Words near unworth in the dictionary

  1. unworshiping
  2. unworshippable
  3. unworshipped
  4. unworshipping
  5. unworsted
  6. unworth
  7. unworthier
  8. unworthies
  9. unworthiest
  10. unworthily
  11. unworthiness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unworth (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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