UNPOLISHED

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does unpolished mean? 

• UNPOLISHED (adjective)
  The adjective UNPOLISHED has 2 senses:

1. not carefully reworked or perfected or made smooth by polishing

2. lacking social polish

  Familiarity information: UNPOLISHED used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNPOLISHED (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Not carefully reworked or perfected or made smooth by polishing

Context example:

dull unpolished shoes

Similar:

raw (untempered and unrefined)

rough (not perfected)

unburnished (of metals e.g.; not made shiny and smooth by friction)

Also:

dull (emitting or reflecting very little light)

unrefined ((used of persons and their behavior) not refined; uncouth)

Antonym:

polished (perfected or made shiny and smooth)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Lacking social polish

Synonyms:

gauche; graceless; unpolished

Context example:

their excellent manners always made me feel gauche

Similar:

inelegant (lacking in refinement or grace or good taste)

 Context examples 

“It is well,” cried Edward, still speaking in French: for, though he could understand English, he had never learned to express himself in so barbarous and unpolished a tongue.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"I trust I shall not eat long at your expense, sir," was my very clumsily- contrived, unpolished answer.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Several characteristics of each tombstone were recorded, including rock type, length of tombstone exposure (based on date of death), direction of the sampled face (cardinal direction) and surface texture (polished or unpolished).

(Tales from the crypt: Life after death in a graveyard, National Science Foundation)

Mr Hayter had some property of his own, but it was insignificant compared with Mr Musgrove's; and while the Musgroves were in the first class of society in the country, the young Hayters would, from their parents' inferior, retired, and unpolished way of living, and their own defective education, have been hardly in any class at all, but for their connexion with Uppercross, this eldest son of course excepted, who had chosen to be a scholar and a gentleman, and who was very superior in cultivation and manners to all the rest.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

They were a family of the name of Martin, whom Emma well knew by character, as renting a large farm of Mr. Knightley, and residing in the parish of Donwell—very creditably, she believed—she knew Mr. Knightley thought highly of them—but they must be coarse and unpolished, and very unfit to be the intimates of a girl who wanted only a little more knowledge and elegance to be quite perfect.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)