Unpalatable

adj, noun

adj, noun ·5 syllables ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Anything distasteful.

    "In the severer cases of hookworm the patient sometimes has an appetite for soil, paper, hair, clay, chalk, starch, and other unpalatables."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Unpleasant to the taste.

    "In one corner of the room there was a huge hearth, over which hung a stock-pot, with a not altogether unpalatable odour of hot soup emanating therefrom."

  2. 2
    Unpleasant or disagreeable. broadly, figuratively

    "But enough of this. Homely truth is unpalatable."

Adjective
  1. 1
    not pleasant or acceptable to the taste or mind wordnet

Example

More examples

"Many politicians employ spin doctors whose job it is to dress up unpalatable government decisions so they will be more readily accepted by the public."

Etymology

From un- + palatable.

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