unintended
Britishadjective
Explanation
If you do something without planning or meaning to do it, it's unintended. An unintended consequence of your fun day at the beach is your painful, peeling sunburn. To intend is to plan or aim to do something. When you don't intend to do something but it happens anyway, it's unintended. An unintended side effect of your winning the 50-yard dash might be the extreme envy of your sister, who's very athletic and loves to win. And if you let her trim your hair later, you may just end up with unintended bangs!
Vocabulary lists containing unintended
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.
The TV Dinner was an early, if unintended, step toward our current world in which unblinking people can’t look away from the screens they carry everywhere, oblivious to what is going on around them.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 12, 2026
In California there have also been unintended impacts on other preschool providers.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 22, 2026
Former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner’s Workers’ Rights Bill in 2025 had the unintended effect of discouraging employers from making permanent hires and instead incentivizing them to take workers on as sub-contractors.
From MarketWatch • Apr. 15, 2026
She has said the changes would better align capital requirements with actual risk and correct unintended consequences from earlier postcrisis rules.
From Barron's • Mar. 27, 2026
Then as now, air raids sometimes hit unintended targets.
From "The War to End All Wars: World War I" by Russell Freedman
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.
