UNWISE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does unwise mean? 

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

1. showing or resulting from lack of judgment or wisdom

2. not appropriate to the purpose

  Familiarity information: UNWISE used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNWISE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Showing or resulting from lack of judgment or wisdom

Context example:

an unwise investor is soon impoverished

Similar:

foolish (devoid of good sense or judgment)

Derivation:

unwiseness (the trait of acting stupidly or rashly)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Not appropriate to the purpose

Synonyms:

inexpedient; unwise

Similar:

impolitic (not politic)

 Context examples 

"We must cross this strange place in order to get to the other side," said Dorothy, "for it would be unwise for us to go any other way except due South."

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

In my position you can readily understand that it is unwise to place one’s self under obligations.’

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I was very unwise to let you go among people of whom I know so little, kind, I dare say, but worldly, ill-bred, and full of these vulgar ideas about young people.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I answered him by assuming it: to refuse would, I felt, have been unwise.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

To begin without knowing that at such a time there will be the means of marrying, I hold to be very unsafe and unwise, and what I think all parents should prevent as far as they can.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

William was required to be at Portsmouth on the 24th; the 22nd would therefore be the last day of his visit; but where the days were so few it would be unwise to fix on any earlier.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

He said, “the Yahoos were known to hate one another, more than they did any different species of animals; and the reason usually assigned was, the odiousness of their own shapes, which all could see in the rest, but not in themselves. He had therefore begun to think it not unwise in us to cover our bodies, and by that invention conceal many of our deformities from each other, which would else be hardly supportable. But he now found he had been mistaken, and that the dissensions of those brutes in his country were owing to the same cause with ours, as I had described them. For if,” said he, “you throw among five Yahoos as much food as would be sufficient for fifty, they will, instead of eating peaceably, fall together by the ears, each single one impatient to have all to itself; and therefore a servant was usually employed to stand by while they were feeding abroad, and those kept at home were tied at a distance from each other: that if a cow died of age or accident, before a Houyhnhnm could secure it for his own Yahoos, those in the neighbourhood would come in herds to seize it, and then would ensue such a battle as I had described, with terrible wounds made by their claws on both sides, although they seldom were able to kill one another, for want of such convenient instruments of death as we had invented. At other times, the like battles have been fought between the Yahoos of several neighbourhoods, without any visible cause; those of one district watching all opportunities to surprise the next, before they are prepared. But if they find their project has miscarried, they return home, and, for want of enemies, engage in what I call a civil war among themselves.

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