MEANING
1. Difficult to accept because it is unpleasant, unwelcome, or disturbing.
2. Unpleasant to taste or difficult to enjoy as food or drink.
Use it for
acknowledging an uncomfortable conclusion; separating dislike of a finding from its validity; describing a proposal that people resist accepting; showing why evidence may meet emotional resistanceDistinguishes an unwelcome conclusion from an invalid one, while preserving the literal unpleasant-taste meaning. Writing functions: Qualification / Uncertainty, Evaluation.
Words that belong together
- an unpalatable truth
- an unpalatable conclusion
- politically unpalatable
On the page
The distributional result may be unpalatable, but that is not a reason to exclude it.
The proposal became politically unpalatable once its immediate costs were clear.
The broth was nourishing but so bitter as to be almost unpalatable.
Smoke had rendered the stored grain unpalatable.
Word forms
- Base
- unpalatable
Usage notes
Adjective. Natural comparison: more unpalatable, most unpalatable. Not unpalatabler. Register: formal. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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