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.
White wrote that Salesforce has “earned the unflattering title as the second-worst performing stock in our coverage universe in 2026.”
From Barron's • Jun. 22, 2026
Utahns have also deluged Cox with thousands of letters in opposition, while regularly convening on the state Capitol with unflattering signs featuring O’Leary and Cox.
From Slate • Jun. 1, 2026
Christian Okafor, a high-school senior in San Diego, says he has been the subject of unflattering lunch photos 30 to 40 times.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 30, 2026
The Independent's reviewer, Nick Hilton, though, gave the "generation-defining show" four stars, saying it "paints a clear-eyed, unflattering portrait of modern America".
From BBC • Apr. 10, 2026
“Hardly. In the old days, Athena tore up all my best work. My tapestries depicted the gods in rather unflattering ways, you see. Your mother didn’t appreciate that.”
From "The Mark of Athena" 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.
