ill-conceived
Americanadjective
Explanation
An ill-conceived idea is one that hasn't been carefully considered. Your ill-conceived plan to ride your skateboard from New York to California is bound to turn out badly. When you don't spend enough time planning or thinking things through, the result is likely to be an ill-conceived scheme of some kind. Ill-conceived laws tend to have unfortunate effects that lawmakers didn't expect, and ill-conceived movie scripts result in films whose plots make no logical sense. Something that's conceived is thought of, planned, or imagined, and when you add the prefix ill, you get something that's planned badly.
Vocabulary lists containing ill-conceived
Internment
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The Faithful Spy
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Moon Over Manifest
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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.
“The fact that we have not died should not be considered a validation of ill-conceived decisions that were unlawful.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 21, 2026
There were also whispers that Gehry, in an effort to recapture the Bilbao magic, was chasing ill-conceived museum commissions around the world.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 5, 2025
One trusts FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, whose crusade against bad language is regarded as ill-conceived and poorly handled by most in F1, will decide not to pursue it on this occasion.
From BBC ● Feb. 18, 2025
As Reisner details in Cadillac Desert, in the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter tried to kill 18 dam projects that seemed especially ill-conceived.
From Slate ● Aug. 28, 2024
“I did. But only because I know you intended to squander the Widow Ashton’s fortune on your ill-conceived business plans.”
From "The Unseen Guest" by Maryrose Wood
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
