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.
Short and stout, he was unprepossessing and—especially unfortunate for a connoisseur of visual art—would soon lose the use of one eye in a car accident.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2025
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 latter sat facing Poirot, and for the second time Poirot studied that unprepossessing face, noting the false benevolence of the brow and the small, cruel eyes.
From "Murder on the Orient Express" by Agatha Christie
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.
