unadorned
Britishadjective
Explanation
Something unadorned has no decorations or frills. It's plain, like a room with nothing on the walls or a person wearing purely functional clothes and no accessories. To adorn something is to decorate it or to dress it up. If something is unadorned, it lacks decorations. An unadorned Christmas tree is just a plain old pine tree. If a woman’s face is unadorned, she’s not wearing makeup. The unadorned truth is the plain truth, with no nonsense. This word means about the same as undecorated, and it can often mean dull. But that’s a matter of taste.
Vocabulary lists containing unadorned
The Devil's Arithmetic
Looking to grow your vocabulary? Check out this interactive, curated word list from our team of English language specialists at Vocabulary.com – one of over 17,000 lists we've built to help learners worldwide!
The Joy Luck Club
Interested in learning more words like this one? Our team at Vocabulary.com has got you covered! You can review flashcards, quiz yourself, practice spelling, and more – and it's all completely free to use!
Gathering Blue
Want to remember this word for good? Start your learning journey today with our library of interactive, themed word lists built by the experts at Vocabulary.com – we'll help you make the most of your study time!
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.
“Girls Like Girls” may be conventionally imagined, but there’s an admirable focus on unadorned warmth in Kiyoko’s storytelling: She likes her girls and cares enough to want us to like them, too.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 19, 2026
Private-label merchandise no longer means generic, unadorned products sitting on the shelf, but rather filling a hole in the assortment at a decent price point.
From Barron's ● Apr. 9, 2026
In other hands, a film of such unadorned fatalism might seem useless, an exercise in emotional sadism.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 26, 2026
In “Enchanted Escape,” we see her ostentatiously unadorned Sèvres porcelain plates and silverware for the royal toilette, a pink neoclassical armchair for resting after doing very little.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026
It ended, again in a gesture of ostentatious moderation, with the unadorned signature: “G. Washington, United States.”
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
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.
