Word.ws English Dictionary

user-hostile

user-hostile adjective: difficult to use, especially for an untrained user.

Adjective

user-hostile (comparative more user-hostile, superlative most user-hostile)

  1. Difficult to use, especially for an untrained user.
    • Usability is not a quality that can be spread out to cover a poor design like a thick layer of peanut butter, so a user-hostile interface does not get user-friendly even by the addition of a brilliant help system.1994, Jakob Nielsen, Usability Engineering
    • If you've had some experience using JavaScript and HTML, then you know that JavaScript can be used to make an interface much more user-friendly (even though it can also be used to create user-hostile features, even ones that crash the browser).2002, Mark Pearrow, The Wireless Web Usability Handbook

Antonyms of user-hostile

Forms of user-hostile

comparativemore user-hostile
superlativemost user-hostile
alternative formuser hostile

Origin of user-hostile

From user + hostile, influenced by user-friendly.

Questions about user-hostile

What does user-hostile mean?
User-hostile means difficult to use, especially for an untrained user.
What part of speech is user-hostile?
User-hostile is an adjective.

Words near user-hostile in the dictionary

  1. user-defined graphics
  2. user-friendlier
  3. user-friendliest
  4. user-friendliness
  5. user-friendly
  6. user-hostile
  7. user-unfriendly
  8. user-upper
  9. user-uppers
  10. user-worked
  11. userbar

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: user-hostile (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.

Last updated:

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