infelicity
Americannoun
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the quality or state of being unhappy; unhappiness.
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misfortune; bad luck.
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an unfortunate circumstance; misfortune.
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inaptness, inappropriateness, or awkwardness, as of action or expression.
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something inapt or infelicitous.
infelicities of style.
noun
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the state or quality of being unhappy or unfortunate
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an instance of bad luck or mischance; misfortune
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something, esp a remark or expression, that is inapt or inappropriate
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of infelicity
1350–1400; Middle English infelicite < Latin infēlīcitās. See in- 3, felicity
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.
See Examples For:
A minor infelicity is the distractingly busy set by David Gallo.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 26, 2026
For a more complete and very funny deconstruction of its infelicity, read Jonathan Last’s riff in The Bulwark.
From New York Times ● Jul. 25, 2020
This type of verbal infelicity underscores the limitations of automatic, computerized word and spelling-check mechanisms, whereby a word or words can slip through undetected, regardless of the context of usage, however inapposite.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 15, 2019
Yet the sheer variety of interactions makes up for the occasional infelicity.
From Slate ● Oct. 26, 2017
Characteristic infelicity on the part of the Government to have neglected this opportunity of recognising a reformed character.
The characters, with their insistence on self-determination, feel too modern, and there are a few infelicities, like the idea that “The Communist Manifesto,” first translated into English toward the end of 1850, would circulate onboard.
From New York Times ● May 22, 2022
Then there’s the error-prone syntax — infelicities in editing and writing that add up quickly.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 10, 2022
And so, as I write, a little tab with a G on it is hovering to the side, ready to flag my infelicities of expression.
From Slate ● Feb. 8, 2022
Everything about me is out of proportion — including my peanut-sized head — so I face the choice of billowing, dowdy garments or tighter clothes that sometimes cruelly expose my physical infelicities.
From Salon ● Jan. 11, 2020
In those first weeks, Bolles’s topic varied each day, depending on factors as unpredictable as the Seattle weather or what particular infelicities of technique he had noticed in the previous practice.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
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.
