UNBECOMING

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does unbecoming mean? 

• UNBECOMING (adjective)
  The adjective UNBECOMING has 1 sense:

1. not in keeping with accepted standards of what is right or proper in polite society

  Familiarity information: UNBECOMING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNBECOMING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Not in keeping with accepted standards of what is right or proper in polite society

Synonyms:

indecent; indecorous; unbecoming; uncomely; unseemly; untoward

Context example:

moved to curb their untoward ribaldry

Similar:

improper (not suitable or right or appropriate)

Derivation:

unbecomingness (the quality of being unbecoming)

 Context examples 

He would not want me to love him; and if I showed the feeling, he would make me sensible that it was a superfluity, unrequired by him, unbecoming in me.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Now Florence's mama hadn't a particle of taste, and Amy suffered deeply at having to wear a red instead of a blue bonnet, unbecoming gowns, and fussy aprons that did not fit.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

You have done a stealthy and unbecoming action, Mr. Copperfield.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

There is something a little stately in him, to be sure, replied her aunt, but it is confined to his air, and is not unbecoming.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

But, fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will patronize in vain—which taste cannot tolerate—which ridicule will seize.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

She had been particularly unwell, however, suffering from headache to a degree, which made her aunt declare, that had the ball taken place, she did not think Jane could have attended it; and it was charity to impute some of her unbecoming indifference to the languor of ill-health.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

It would be sunk into a badge of disgrace; for what can be more unbecoming, or more worthless, than the uniform of a lieutenant, who has been a lieutenant a year or two, and sees others made commanders before him?

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Now your honour is to know, that these judges are persons appointed to decide all controversies of property, as well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the most dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy; and having been biassed all their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity of favouring fraud, perjury, and oppression, that I have known some of them refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty, by doing any thing unbecoming their nature or their office.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

But she was so wholly unused to confer favours, except on the very poor, so unpractised in removing evils, or bestowing kindnesses among her equals, and so fearful of appearing to elevate herself as a great lady at home, that it took some time to determine that it would not be unbecoming in her to make such a present.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)