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 whole thing was stupid and ill-conceived," says Steve Grant, co-host of the Total Saints podcast.
From BBC ● Jun. 3, 2026
Will the ship’s captain continue on his ill-conceived scientific voyage after his encounter with man and monster?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2025
His record speaks for itself: no postseason wins in more than a decade, a revolving door of managers and GMs, and enough ill-conceived signings to keep sports talk radio in business for years.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 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
He had made me feel dumb in my uniform, like a bozo carrying out someone else’s ill-conceived plan.
From "Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing" by Ted Conover
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.
