Unpleasant Meaning
/ʌnˈplɛzn̩t/Definition, CEFR level B1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
adjNot pleasant.
Sentence Examples
Wet blankets are not always unpleasant after you get to know them.
Don't you find it unpleasant walking in the rain?
He has the power to make things very unpleasant for us.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The smell from the garbage was so ____ that everyone left the room.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
There was an ____ smell coming from the old fridge, so we decided to clean it thoroughly.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English unplesaunt, equivalent to un- + pleasant.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"O sweet Portia, / Here are a few of the unpleasant’st words / That ever blotted paper!"
— c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:
"It was indeed one admirable piece of Conduct in the said Magistrates, that the Streets were kept constantly clear, and free from all manner of frightful Objects, dead Bodies, or any such things as were indecent or unpleasant, unless where any Body fell down suddenly or died in the Streets […]"
— 1722, Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, London: E. Nutt, page 214:
"The very circumstance, in its unpleasantest form, which they would each have been most anxious to avoid, had fallen on them."
— 1811, [Jane Austen], chapter 35, in Sense and Sensibility […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] C[harles] Roworth, […], and published by T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC:
"[…] she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: […]"
— 1865 November (indicated as 1866), Lewis Carroll [pseudonym; Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], “Down the Rabbit-Hole”, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, London: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 10:
"And I dipped into novels so like the unpleasanter parts of my own life that they might just as well have been autobiographies."
— 1921, Walter de la Mare, “Chapter 37”, in Memoirs of a Midget:
Explore More B1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The smell from the garbage was so ____ that everyone left the room.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
There was an ____ smell coming from the old fridge, so we decided to clean it thoroughly.