unserious

adjective un·se·ri·ous \ ˌən-ˈsir-ē-əs \

|Updated on: 17 Jun 2018

Definition of unserious

: not serious

unserious writers

unserious debates

… recognize the difference between serious and unserious warnings.
—Meg Greenfield

—

unseriously

adverb

- talking unseriously

—

unseriousness

noun

Recent Examples of unserious from the Web

To not take the World Cup seriously—or worse, to ignore it altogether—is to declare yourself in 2018 an unserious sports fan, because there is no bigger sports spectacle, with greater stakes, than this.

— jason gay, WSJ, "A World Cup With It All, Just Not U.S.," 12 June 2018
That Sessions is willing to burn the house down over such a mundane concept tells us a lot about how unserious his whole position is.

— cristian farias, Daily Intelligencer, "On Obamacare, the Department of Justice Is Standing Against the Rule of Law," 8 June 2018
Sports can be hard to take seriously, because sports are often unserious.

— jason gay, WSJ, "Sports’ Newest Battlefront: Mental Health," 20 May 2018
If an injury is unserious, a child should rise to the occasion and play on.

— abigail shrier, WSJ, "‘Knock It Off’ and ‘Shake It Off’: The Case for Dad-Style Parenting," 12 Mar. 2018
Paul was an outlier, a journalist who produced serious work within an inherently unserious system.

— steve almond, Longreads, "My Own ‘Bad Story’: I Thought Journalism Would Make a Hero of Me," 3 Apr. 2018
Essentially, the judge in this latest case found Tim Ball’s entire article outlining his case against climate science to be as transparently unserious as an intentional parody, which may not exactly be the victory Ball hoped for.

— scott k. johnson, Ars Technica, "Judge finds written attack on climate scientist too ludicrous to be libel," 19 Feb. 2018
As even a number of thoughtful Democratic-party foreign-policy experts admit privately, however, this public position was unserious, since the practical tradeoffs were very real.

— colin dueck, National Review, "How to Defend the West," 7 Feb. 2018
Two buddies on society's lower rungs live vicariously through the exploits of a superior in The Great Buddha +, Hsin-yao Huang's cheeky but not unserious fiction feature debut.

— john defore, The Hollywood Reporter, "'The Great Buddha +': Film Review," 7 Feb. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'unserious.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

First Known Use of unserious

1655

in the meaning defined above

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unserious

Definition of unserious

unseriously

unseriousness

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unseriously

unseriousness

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