unprepossessing
Britishadjective
Explanation
If you find someone to be unprepossessing, you find them unattractive. Not that they're ugly, mind you! Just unprepossessing. Unprepossessing is a rather indirect way of calling someone unattractive, or at best OK-looking. Unprepossessing is not quite the same as "ugly." Rather, just a way of saying that someone's looks aren't what you're most likely to remember about them. Cinderella was most unprepossessing in the filthy clothes and worn-out shoes that her step-sisters forced her to wear. But when she was all decked out by her fairy godmother, she was the belle of the ball: she was no longer unprepossessing.
Vocabulary lists containing unprepossessing
100 SAT Words Beginning with "U"
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Murder on the Orient Express
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The Count of Monte Cristo
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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.
Pepys thought of himself as a ladykiller, but one doubts many women found him attractive—Pepys was an unprepossessing 5 feet 1 inch tall.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 5, 2026
As unprepossessing as most of LAX looks, it’s redeemed by the spectacular, late ‘50s-early ‘60s Space Age “theme building.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 13, 2023
The show, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sounds unprepossessing.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 3, 2023
Walk down an unprepossessing, fluorescent-lit hallway, with its drinking fountains and bulletin boards, following the thumping bass and happy hollering.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 27, 2023
The instant his unprepossessing head emerged into daylight, sunlight, Franny took him under the shoulders and lifted him up into intimate greeting distance.
From "Franny and Zooey" by J. D. Salinger
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.
