Inartful

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Awkwardly expressed but not necessarily untrue; ill-phrased; inexpedient

    "2008, Barack Obama, prepared statement, quoted in William Safire, “Inartful”, The New York Times Magazine, 2008 July 20, The fact that […] General Clark said something that was inartful about John McCain, I don’t think is what is keeping Ohioans up at night."

Synonyms

All synonyms
clumsyunartful

Example

More examples

"2008, Barack Obama, prepared statement, quoted in William Safire, “Inartful”, The New York Times Magazine, 2008 July 20, The fact that […] General Clark said something that was inartful about John McCain, I don’t think is what is keeping Ohioans up at night."

Etymology

Alteration of earlier unartful, equivalent to in- + artful.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.