unsustainable
Americanadjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of unsustainable
1670–80; un- 1 + sustainable ( def. )
Explanation
If something is unsustainable, there's just no way to keep doing it at the same rate or in the same way. You've been able to keep your new puppy from whining by petting her all night long, but that's unsustainable. When you can bear something, or continue it, it's sustainable, from the Latin root sustinere, "bear or endure." Unsustainable things can't go on, like unsustainable economic growth that's bound to level out or drop eventually, or an unsustainable expectation that you will always have a perfect grade point average. When it comes to the environment, practices that cause long-term harm or deplete resources are also unsustainable: "Ending unsustainable fishing practices successfully revived the salmon population."
Vocabulary lists containing unsustainable
Power Prefix: un-
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Prefixes: un-
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Organisms and Environments 1: The Environment
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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.
"We've got a sizeable deficit and obviously that's unsustainable in the long term," she told BBC News NI.
From BBC ● Oct. 17, 2026
Seafood has been slower to face such scrutiny, though, as the world leans further into aquaculture, that may change, she said, particularly if more governments begin restricting imports tied to illegality or unsustainable practices.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 2026
Separate IRA subsidies for Part D plans end after 2029, which “raises significant cause for concern around unsustainable premium increases and continued market exits in the near-term,” she wrote.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 4, 2026
Molango said Palmer's recent withdrawal from the England squad highlighted a match calendar that is unsustainable and has become the "survival of the fittest".
From BBC ● Sep. 29, 2026
In any society built on institutionalized racism, race-mixing doesn’t merely challenge the system as unjust, it reveals the system as unsustainable and incoherent.
From "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood" by Trevor Noah
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
