unfortunately

adverb

un·​for·​tu·​nate·​ly

ˌən-ˈfȯrch-nət-lē,

-ˈfȯr-chə- 

1

: it is unfortunate

Unfortunately, in the intervening years, time has not stood still for the global environment.

—Al Gore

A young man can work at excessive speed with no ill effects, but youth is unfortunately not a permanent condition of life.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald

2

: in a regrettable, unlucky, or unsuitable manner : in an unfortunate manner

"Have you an agreeable neighbourhood here? Are the Middletons pleasant people?" "No, not all," answered Marianne; "we could not be more unfortunately situated."

—Jane Austen

The past couple years have ended unfortunately for us, and we're using it as motivation.

—James Moyers

Examples of unfortunately in a Sentence

Our awards program evaluates wine lists, not restaurants as a whole. While we assume the level of food and service will be commensurate with the quality of the wine lists submitted by award winners, this unfortunately is not always true. —Wine Spectator, 31 Aug. 2008

Coral reefs provide essential goods and services to maritime tropical nations and are the most diverse marine ecosystems on the planet. Unfortunately, reefs are seriously declining because of global warming. —Andrea G. Grottoli et al., Nature, 27 Apr. 2006

There are many books announcing a global economic transformation and suggesting that governments can be reengineered to adapt to it in much the same way as corporations.  … Unfortunately the problems of globalization are more intractable than those of corporate life. States cannot be phased out like bankrupt firms, and large shifts in wealth and power tend to be fiercely contested. —John Gray, New York Review of Books, 11 Aug. 2005

Doctors have long believed that children experience pain differently than adults. Unfortunately, most doctors thought kids felt pain less than grownups do, and didn't retain memory of it. As late as the 1970s, infants underwent major surgery without anesthetics.  … This barbaric notion was finally put to rest in the 1980s … —Michael D. Lemonick, Time, 28 Feb. 2005

In the aftermath of the Revolution, Americans desperately needed some non-British heroes. Columbus filled the bill even though no one knew much about him until novelist Washington Irving visited Spain, found a rich lode of source materials and produced a widely read biography. Unfortunately, Irving mixed fiction with fact, and one of his most graphic scenes, set in Salamanca, was wildly imaginative. —Owen Gingerich, Scientific American, November 1992

Recent Examples on the Web

And unfortunately, and sadly enough, one of the boys who was 11 years old was shot in the back. —Jenna Sundel jason Lemon, MSNBC Newsweek, 2 Sep. 2025

French described the Missouri hospital’s decision as unfortunately common. —Peter Slevin, New Yorker, 1 Sep. 2025

Among them, unfortunately, are a number of questionable and distracting Mancunian accents from a cast which is, er, mostly not from Manchester—intonations that will likely go unnoticed by American ears, but may be unbearable to some British ones. —Radhika Seth, Vogue, 1 Sep. 2025

Only four episodes remain in what has been an emotional third season, which will unfortunately serve as the final installment in Jenny Han’s romance series. —Monica Mercuri, Forbes.com, 26 Aug. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1548, in the meaning defined at sense 2

Rhymes for unfortunately

• fortunately