as in dumb
not having or showing an ability to absorb ideas readily you're not unintelligent, so you must just be stubbornly resisting all attempts to teach you something

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of unintelligent Google had to re-edit a Super Bowl ad for its artificial intelligence (AI) tool Gemini because the original ad had Gemini seeming artificially unintelligent. Greg Cote, Miami Herald, 7 Feb. 2025 Growing shares in each party describe those in the other party as more closed-minded, dishonest, immoral and unintelligent than other Americans. NBC News, 22 Dec. 2024 In short: Wells assumed Neanderthals were unintelligent brutes. Byrd Pinkerton, Vox, 7 Dec. 2018 Participants hesitated almost three times as long to switch off an intelligent and agreeable robot (34.5 seconds) compared to an unintelligent and non agreeable robot (11.8 seconds). IEEE Spectrum, 31 Jan. 2013 See All Example Sentences for unintelligent
Recent Examples of Synonyms for unintelligent
Adjective
  • There was also, perhaps, general irritation at the idea that such a successful team should be the recipient of so much dumb luck.
    Louisa Thomas, New Yorker, 12 Oct. 2025
  • Many students have acted boldly, and occasionally made dumb mistakes, because they were outraged by historical wrongs, incendiary speakers, cultural stereotypes, or other provocations.
    Christopher L. Eisgruber, Time, 9 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • When smart algorithms do stupid things But scratch beneath the surface, and the cracks start showing.
    Christopher Elliott, USA Today, 8 Oct. 2025
  • America has funded the Ukrainian government, Ukrainian pensions, and Ukrainian businesses during this entire stupid war that America should have nothing to do with.
    Jordan King, MSNBC Newsweek, 7 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Losing is so deeply ingrained in the fabric of this franchise that every slow start has the potential to snowball.
    Matthew Fairburn, New York Times, 12 Oct. 2025
  • His administration has seen some success; inflation in Argentina eased this year to the slowest monthly pace in more than four years.
    Bryan Mena, CNN Money, 12 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Strufe adds that while intelligence agencies or cybercriminals have simpler ways to monitor people – such as accessing CCTV cameras or video doorbells – the widespread presence of wireless networks could eventually form a near-comprehensive surveillance infrastructure.
    Bojan Stojkovski, Interesting Engineering, 11 Oct. 2025
  • The simplest way to find influential people in a network is called degree centrality—just count the number of connections for each person.
    Jack Murtagh, Scientific American, 11 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • The pilot has moments both sweet and funny, and sets up the possibility of romance amongst the characters, as well as further high jinks from a rotating cast of license seekers and citizens ignorant of the requirements for a Real ID.
    Kelly Lawler, USA Today, 11 Oct. 2025
  • At the time, central Appalachia was widely depicted in the popular press as a backward, ignorant region whose mountainous terrain kept its people isolated, outside the flow of progress – a stereotype still common today.
    The Conversation, The Conversation, 7 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Their style of pitching — relentlessly pound the strike zone — works well in a ballpark where the thick air depresses doubles and triples.
    Tyler Kepner, New York Times, 16 Oct. 2025
  • Let cool and spread a layer, about one-fourth-inch thick, of cream cheese icing over the entire cake.
    Kathryn Gregory, Louisville Courier Journal, 15 Oct. 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Unintelligent.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/unintelligent. Accessed 18 Oct. 2025.

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