Definitions

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

  • adjective Distasteful or disagreeable.
  • adjective Not savory.
  • adjective Morally offensive.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Not savory; tasteless; insipid.
  • Disagreeable to the taste or smell. Unpleasing; offensive, intellectually or morally; disagreeable.
  • Synonyms Unpalatable, ill-flavored, state.
  • Disgusting, nauseous.

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

  • adjective Not savory; without flavor.
  • adjective Of bad taste; distasteful.
  • adjective Making an activity undesirable.
  • adjective Disreputable, not respectable, of questionable moral character.

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

  • adjective morally offensive
  • adjective not pleasing in odor or taste

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Hard to imagine that anything this unsavory is anything but a hoax.

    Boing Boing: December 30, 2001 - January 5, 2002 Archives 2001

  • It makes people build more houses, which leads to urban sprawl and an automotive dominated transit infrastructure that contributes to global warming, leaves us dependent on fuel sources in unsavory parts of the globe, and wastes countless man-hours by being so damned spread out.

    Matthew Yglesias » Endgame 2010

  • Why don't you look over to the business and law schools profs, they make almost twice what you make, but that doesn't mean anything unsavory is going on.

    First Lady Mary Easley Gets Big Pay Raise 2008

  • His mannerisms and tone on television suggest an abiding arrogance; he is often described as unsavory and unpleasant.

    Dylan Loewe: Mark Penn Finally Fired 2008

  • “The whole kernel has been reorganized and rewritten to help prevent software from affecting the system in unsavory ways.”

    Abandon Vista. We don’t need another desktop OS « Squash 2006

  • Just because you think something unsavory is necessary doesn’t mean you love it.

    Matthew Yglesias » The Real Torture Debate 2010

  • If you add all the milk, or too much of the milk at one time, the sauce will contain unsavory lumps of flour.)

    Creamed Spinach ♥ | A Veggie Venture 2005

  • Characterized by an unsavory combination of ignorance, callousness and raw greed, members of this party control one chamber of Congress, and a number of state legislatures and governorships around the country.

    David A. Love: Americans Would Doom an American Reconstruction Effort to Failure David A. Love 2011

  • This "essentialism" is a technical word for the attributes of traditional racism: namely, that there is some essential attribute to being a particular race which causes certain often characterized as unsavory behaviors.

    The Dummy Is Back... Nathaniel Livingston 2005

  • This "essentialism" is a technical word for the attributes of traditional racism: namely, that there is some essential attribute to being a particular race which causes certain often characterized as unsavory behaviors.

    Archive 2005-03-01 Nathaniel Livingston 2005

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