What does "pseudoscientific" mean?

Of, relating to, or employing pseudoscience; not scientific, though purporting to be scientific.

What is a synonym for "pseudoscientific"?

Common synonyms include: pseudoscientifical, sciencey, unscientific.

Pseudoscientific

adj

adj ·6 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective

1
Of, relating to, or employing pseudoscience; not scientific, though purporting to be scientific.
"[…] another example of the desire to control deviant lifestyles: the preparation by the FBI of pseudoscientific "profiles" that purport to describe the murderers."

Adjective

1
based on theories and methods erroneously regarded as scientific wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

pseudoscientifical sciencey unscientific

Example

More examples

"[…] another example of the desire to control deviant lifestyles: the preparation by the FBI of pseudoscientific "profiles" that purport to describe the murderers."

Etymology

From pseudoscience + -ific, by analogy with scientific, equivalent to pseudo- + scientific.

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