undisciplined
Britishadjective
Explanation
Undisciplined means uncontrolled or disorderly. An undisciplined bunch of dogs is nearly impossible to walk down the sidewalk together: they all want to run in different directions, chase squirrels, and bark wildly. When you take the word disciplined, "showing control or order," and add un-, or "not," to it, you get undisciplined. This is a great way to describe an out-of-control classroom, an athlete whose explosive anger gets her kicked off the field, or someone who can't manage his own money well, spending an entire paycheck all in one place.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“His mind was, from what I could see, largely undisciplined, which is how he could make these connections so unexpectedly and usefully, but not always usefully,” Crocker said.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 6, 2026
I’m old enough to remember when friends in the Arkansas political press corps scoffed at the notion their governor, the phenomenally gifted but wildly undisciplined Bill Clinton, could ever be elected president.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 14, 2025
She believes she’s as capable as Joel to confront Cordyceps-infected monsters or undisciplined marauders, enemies she believes she knows.
From Salon • Apr. 21, 2025
The problem is that Ronan is also forging her compelling warts-and-all portrait of obliteration and recovery in another type of gale storm, that of undisciplined filmmaking at odds with the patient harvesting of characterization.
From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 3, 2024
To keep order among the big undisciplined boys without pistol and bull whip was a difficult and dangerous business.
From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
