Unkempt

adj

adj ·2 syllables ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Uncombed; dishevelled.

    "He was a queer shoot, again, in his unkempt longish hair and slovenly clothes, a sort of very vulgar down-at-heel American in appearance."

  2. 2
    Disorderly; untidy; messy; not kept up. broadly

    "unkempt bedroom"

  3. 3
    Rough; unpolished figuratively
Adjective
  1. 1
    not properly maintained or cared for wordnet
  2. 2
    not neatly combed wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
untidyslovenlyuncombedanimalbarbarianbarbaric

Example

More examples

"I hope nobody minds my being straggly and unkempt at five in the morning."

Etymology

From earlier unkembed, unkemmed, from Middle English unkempt (“uncombed”), equivalent to un- + kempt. Compare Old Norse úkembdr (uncombed; unkempt"; > Icelandic ókembdur), German ungekämmt (“unkempt”), Dutch ongekamd. More at kemb.

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