ill-defined
Americanadjective
adjective
Etymology
Origin of ill-defined
First recorded in 1865–70
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.
Researchers called the terms ill-defined and said they aren’t used in international counterterrorism work.
From Salon ● May 19, 2026
“The role is ill-defined by design,” said Kanekar, whose advisory business has seen a surge of interest from organizations looking to replicate the Palantir model over the past six months.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 4, 2026
According to reports, these include OpenAI going public or achieving artificial general intelligence, a sometimes ill-defined standard of AI capability that more closely matches human-level ability.
From Barron's ● Feb. 27, 2026
Some experts are now calling these ambitions vague and ill-defined – giving China an opening to dominate the open-source AI space.
From BBC ● Jan. 23, 2026
It struck him at once that she had changed in some ill-defined way.
From "1984" by George Orwell
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.
