Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Marked by or exhibiting a lack of reliability.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Not reliable; not to be relied or depended on. (Imp. Dict.)

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Not reliable; untrustworthy. See reliable.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Not reliable.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective lacking a sense of responsibility
  • adjective liable to be erroneous or misleading
  • adjective not worthy of reliance or trust
  • adjective dangerously unstable and unpredictable

Etymologies

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Examples

  • With Stella you have added to a literary history rich in unreliable narrators.

    Janni Visman discusses her first novel, Yellow 2010

  • The sad truth is that “non-fiction” has been unreliable from the beginning, no matter how finely grained a section of human knowledge we wish to consider.

    Cooked Books « Isegoria 2008

  • In Cooked Books, Tyler Cowen explains that the sad truth is that “non-fiction” has been unreliable from the beginning:

    Cooked Books « Isegoria 2008

  • Generic, national polls remain unreliable for reading individual House, and even Senate, races, not to mention the other challenges of modern polling, to correctly measure actual turnout, to actually obtain polling answers from likely voters, and so on.

    Sound Politics: Republicans Picking Up Steam As Election Day Nears 2006

  • The folks at my favorite Braves blog, Rowland's Office, are using the Braves 'depressing plummet to the deep end of the standings to move their headquarters from the painfully unreliable Blogger to the just plain unreliable Typepad.

    Round the 'Hood 2006

  • The folks at my favorite Braves blog, Rowland's Office, are using the Braves 'depressing plummet to the deep end of the standings to move their headquarters from the painfully unreliable Blogger to the just plain unreliable Typepad.

    June 2006 2006

  • What makes Wikipedia unreliable is that it can not be controlled.

    UberWikipedia « BuzzMachine 2005

  • What makes Wikipedia unreliable is that there are too many points at which sorrect material can be adjusted, edited, purged, spun, etc.

    UberWikipedia « BuzzMachine 2005

  • It was Miller who clearly placed far too much credence in unreliable sources, and then credulously used dubious administration officials to confirm what she was told.

    May 2004 2004

  • Pakistan, regarded as critical to U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, is often described as an unreliable partner.

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2011

Comments

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  • I'm just hearing on the radio about an employer who was refused placement of an ad for staff because it contained the words 'hard-working and reliable'.

    They were told that the ad could not be accepted for publication because it may be seen to discriminate against the unreliable.

    True.

    January 27, 2010