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
“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 high-profile stumbles, including jettisoning staff of the tiny Turner Classic Movies channel and an ill-conceived rebrand of its streamer to “Max” before changing the name back to HBO Max.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 30, 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
It was not an ill-conceived plan, and I told Eddie he should smuggle out the suggestion to Oliver in Lusaka.
From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela
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.
