unliterary
adjective
un·lit·er·ary
ˌən-ˈli-tə-ˌrer-ē 
: not literary
D. H. Lawrence died in March 1930, when I was just 13 years old and too unliterary to notice.—
Anthony Burgess
Anthony BurgessMr. Singer was a modest man with an unassuming and unliterary style of life: he liked to wear plain business suits and he preferred dairy restaurants to writers' bars.—Eric Pace
Eric PaceExamples of unliterary in a Sentence
poems written in a natural, unliterary voice
Recent Examples on the Web
The bond between Alice and the spiky, decidedly unliterary Felix might flummox.
—New York Times, 1 Sep. 2021
Both were born as writers in public libraries—hyper-bright American Jewish urban boys from unliterary backgrounds, encountering the classics on their own, without too much pre-sorting, responding with delight, imitation, amusement, and familiarity.
—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 24 Aug. 2021
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New York Times, 1 Sep. 2021
Both were born as writers in public libraries—hyper-bright American Jewish urban boys from unliterary backgrounds, encountering the classics on their own, without too much pre-sorting, responding with delight, imitation, amusement, and familiarity.
—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 24 Aug. 2021
Cite this Entry
“Unliterary.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unliterary. Accessed 21 Jul. 2025.
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