unflattering
Britishadjective
Explanation
Unflattering things make you look bad, like an unflattering photograph your dad takes while you're eating a cheeseburger or the unflattering review of your band's first concert. If the light is unflattering, it'll make people look tired or pale, or cast strange shadows that cause pictures you take of them to look terrible. An unflattering movie review makes the film sound boring or badly acted. When something is flattering, it compliments someone, or shows a person or a thing in its very best light, from the Old French root flater, "caress." Add the "not" prefix un-, and you get unflattering.
Vocabulary lists containing unflattering
"Face Facts: The Science of Facial Expressions" and "Silent Language"
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You Bring the Distant Near
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Holding Up the Universe
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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.
She talks almost exclusively about herself, interrupts constantly and has an opinion about everyone, often an unflattering one.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 21, 2026
In December, Vanity Fair published interviews with Wiles in which she gave a blunt - and occasionally unflattering - assessment of her time working in the Trump White House.
From BBC ● Sep. 16, 2026
"Such unflattering incidents are conspicuously absent from Byfield's earlier accounts of his military service," O'Keeffe says.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 7, 2026
His predecessor, Kristi Noem, attracted unflattering attention for her department’s aggressive crackdowns.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 2026
Leo muttered some unflattering comments about numina, but he turned the wheel.
From "The House of Hades" by Rick Riordan
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.
