UNSOUND

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does unsound mean? 

• UNSOUND (adjective)
  The adjective UNSOUND has 6 senses:

1. not in good condition; damaged or decayed

2. not sound financially

3. containing or based on a fallacy

4. suffering from severe mental illness

5. physically unsound or diseased

6. of e.g. advice

  Familiarity information: UNSOUND used as an adjective is common.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNSOUND (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Not in good condition; damaged or decayed

Context example:

an unsound foundation

Similar:

corroded (eaten away as by acid or oxidation)

decayed; rotted; rotten (damaged by decay; hence unsound and useless)

Antonym:

sound (in good condition; free from defect or damage or decay)

Derivation:

unsoundness (a condition of damage or decay)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Not sound financially

Context example:

unsound banking practices

Similar:

bad; high-risk; risky; speculative (not financially safe or secure)

long (involving substantial risk)

wildcat (outside the bounds of legitimate or ethical business practices)

Also:

broken (physically and forcibly separated into pieces or cracked or split)

damaged (harmed or injured or spoiled)

unfit (not in good physical or mental condition; out of condition)

unhealthy (not in or exhibiting good health in body or mind)

injured (harmed)

unwholesome (detrimental to physical or moral well-being)

Antonym:

sound (financially secure and safe)

Derivation:

unsoundness (a condition of damage or decay)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Containing or based on a fallacy

Synonyms:

fallacious; unsound

Context example:

an unsound argument

Similar:

invalid (having no cogency or legal force)

Derivation:

unsoundness (a misconception that is fallacious and not true or valid)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Suffering from severe mental illness

Synonyms:

mentally ill; unsound; unstable

Context example:

of unsound mind

Similar:

insane (afflicted with or characteristic of mental derangement)

Derivation:

unsoundness (not mentally or physically healthy)

Sense 5

Meaning:

Physically unsound or diseased

Synonyms:

bad; unfit; unsound

Context example:

unsound teeth

Similar:

unhealthy (not in or exhibiting good health in body or mind)

Derivation:

unsoundness (not mentally or physically healthy)

Sense 6

Meaning:

Of e.g. advice

Similar:

undependable; unreliable (not worthy of reliance or trust)

 Context examples 

“Perhaps it's a good thing, Traddles,” said I, “to have an unsound Hobby ridden hard; for it's the sooner ridden to death.”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Pesticides can be one of the contributing factors, says Mohammed Saiful Islam, scientist at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, and lead author of the study, which used a ‘mixed-methods’ approach to identify risk factors for AES and unsound practices around lychee cultivation in Dinajpur.

(Lychee deaths linked to pesticides, not the fruit, SciDev.Net)

I made his honour my most humble acknowledgments for the good opinion he was pleased to conceive of me, but assured him at the same time, “that my birth was of the lower sort, having been born of plain honest parents, who were just able to give me a tolerable education; that nobility, among us, was altogether a different thing from the idea he had of it; that our young noblemen are bred from their childhood in idleness and luxury; that, as soon as years will permit, they consume their vigour, and contract odious diseases among lewd females; and when their fortunes are almost ruined, they marry some woman of mean birth, disagreeable person, and unsound constitution (merely for the sake of money), whom they hate and despise. That the productions of such marriages are generally scrofulous, rickety, or deformed children; by which means the family seldom continues above three generations, unless the wife takes care to provide a healthy father, among her neighbours or domestics, in order to improve and continue the breed. That a weak diseased body, a meagre countenance, and sallow complexion, are the true marks of noble blood; and a healthy robust appearance is so disgraceful in a man of quality, that the world concludes his real father to have been a groom or a coachman. The imperfections of his mind run parallel with those of his body, being a composition of spleen, dullness, ignorance, caprice, sensuality, and pride.

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

But all these tokens of past grandeur were miserably decayed and dirty; rot, damp, and age, had weakened the flooring, which in many places was unsound and even unsafe.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)