inelegant

[ in-el-i-guhnt ]

adjective

1. not elegant; lacking in refinement, gracefulness, or good taste.

inelegant

/ ɪnˈɛlɪɡənt /

adjective

1. lacking in elegance or refinement; unpolished or graceless
2. coarse or crude

Derived Forms

• inˈelegance, noun
• inˈelegantly, adverb

Other Words From

• in·ele·gant·ly adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of inelegant¹

First recorded in 1500–10, inelegant is from the Latin word inēlegant- (stem of inēlegāns ). See in- ³, elegant

Example Sentences

They’re opaque, with hundreds of obscure settings and features that—unless you love inelegant, browser-based interfaces—are often difficult to even access, let alone tweak.

From Popular-Science

No, she didn’t put the pieces of tape on the outside of the pants — that would have been inelegant and unstylish — she put them unobtrusively on the inside of the pants, each covering one of the two holes.

From Washington Post

At 9, he taught inelegant programming languages like Visual Basic and COBOL to his sister — then a college sophomore.

From Ozy

Hence, McConnell’s conundrum, which manifested in this week’s brazen and inelegant shut-up-but-give stance.

From Time

That leaves us with “pandemic,” an inelegant word that’s probably hard to rhyme.

From FiveThirtyEight

Fluoride first entered an American water supply through a rather inelegant technocratic scheme.

From The Daily Beast

The clothes, however, were a chaotic pastiche of fur and glitter assembled in inelegant ways.

From The Daily Beast

It was Callista, officer, who forced her husband to make his inelegant comments on Medicare that infuriated the conservative base.

From The Daily Beast

Its components were simple, inelegant, and, by Western standards, of seemingly workmanlike craftsmanship.

From The Daily Beast

Duffer is most inelegant (this from Julie in an assumption of stern reproach); I do not see wherever you picked up such a word.

From Project Gutenberg

This inelegant jeu de theatre is severely ridiculed in the "Rehearsal."

From Project Gutenberg

Did you have a recollection at the time, at least—that is an inelegant question.

From Project Gutenberg

The use of tre for aller when followed by an infinitive is inelegant, though the construction is sometimes used by good writers.

From Project Gutenberg

It is easy to read in this illustration the parable of death destroying a fruitful vine, and as a picture it is not inelegant.

From Project Gutenberg