Unhero
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 One who is not a hero; a nonhero.
"On one level of meaning this unhero is clearly a political statement, a protest of the military and governmental authority. But he is not that alone; he is also a statement against all masculine assertion as this has been traditionally understood. The unhero nevertheless has his unheroine mate."
- 2 A hero who does not fit the archetype of a hero; an antihero.
"Everyone in the story is absolutely outside time, everything in it is terribly old-fashioned and affected, the "hero" with all of his experiences is infinitely shallow, pompous, and low-standard. He is in principle an "unhero" and everything in the story is in principle deheroized."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"On one level of meaning this unhero is clearly a political statement, a protest of the military and governmental authority. But he is not that alone; he is also a statement against all masculine assertion as this has been traditionally understood. The unhero nevertheless has his unheroine mate."
Etymology
From un- + hero.
More for "unhero"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.