unserious

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

Updated on: 6 May 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

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
His medical disclosures during the 2016 campaign were hyperbolic and unserious.

— aaron blake, Washington Post, "Conspiracy theories about Trump's weight are becoming gratuitous," 17 Jan. 2018
The very phrase to tweet a threat is unserious; the medium is the message in a very bad way.

— isaac chotiner, Slate Magazine, "Sympathy for North Korea," 3 Jan. 2018
If ever the i Division were merely a virtue-signaling pilot program with unserious volume expectations, Dieselgate put an end to that.

— dan neil, WSJ, "The Avant-Garde BMW i8: Bavaria’s Answer to Tesla," 31 Aug. 2017

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

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in the meaning defined above

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unserious

Definition of unserious

unseriously

unseriousness

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