adjective
-
lacking moral principles; unscrupulous
-
archaic (foll by in) not versed in the principles of (a subject)
Related Words
See unscrupulous.
Other Word Forms
- unprincipledness noun
Etymology
Origin of unprincipled
First recorded in 1625–35; un- 1 + principled
Explanation
An unprincipled person follows no moral code, has no integrity, and should not be trusted, like the guy who offers to help an old lady across the street but steals her purse instead. No, unprincipled isn't a word we use to describe a school that's missing its principal — we're talking about the -ple word here. If you don't have principles, which is what unprincipled really means, then you don't have scruples or morals. You're likely to do just about anything bad, like break rules, take advantage of people, tell lots of lies, and extort people's lunch money.
Vocabulary lists containing unprincipled
100 SAT Words Beginning with "U"
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Henry David Thoreau "Civil Disobedience" (1849)
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Civil Disobedience
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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.
The careers of men like Charles Ponzi, Jesse Livermore, and Ivan Boesky remind us that one unprincipled gambler can still cause immense damage to respectable shareholders, the market itself, and even the nation.
From Barron's • Mar. 1, 2026
First, there’s the popular 2007 soap opera “Paraíso Tropical,” in which he played an unprincipled businessman.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 3, 2025
During the 1990s he privately criticized the “barbarians” brought in by a new editor, Tina Brown, but admitted to Garrison Keillor his “own unprincipled connivance with the Tina regime.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 10, 2025
"No-one can accuse me of not delivering, of bending under pressure or being unprincipled."
From BBC • Mar. 13, 2023
This was the decision that caused Hamilton to repeat his earlier characterizations of Burr as the unprincipled American Catiline, which in turn generated the newspaper reports containing the offensive word “despicable.”
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
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.
