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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Recent Examples of unintelligent
The show and its participants were even parodied on Saturday Night Live in January, with comedian Ego Nwodim playing Amuli, and other cast members mocking people’s poor conversation skills and unintelligent dating decisions.
—
Ct Jones, Rolling Stone, 10 Apr. 2025
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
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
Ct Jones, Rolling Stone, 10 Apr. 2025
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
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
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But also these dumb things, from another perspective, can have a certain type of digital trashy poetry.—
Andy Crump,
Time,
31 Oct. 2025
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The bounty hunter kills some random dudes who are dumb enough to cross him and steals a Falka doll from some little girls who have adopted the Rats as folk heroes.—
Scott Meslow,
Vulture,
30 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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What gave me the crazy idea to stand at the bar, listening to that woman being praised for her stupid f---ing commitment to New York City and her ugly f---ing buildings?—
Charlotte Phillipp,
PEOPLE,
7 Nov. 2025
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Her mechanism for luring victims involves a stick, someone’s hair, her blood, and another person stupid enough to let her through their front door.—
Ryan Lattanzio,
IndieWire,
6 Nov. 2025
Adjective
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Tiles also exhibited hysteresis, which was smaller at slower speeds due to the rubber’s viscoelastic properties, as reported by Nanowerk.—
Jijo Malayil,
Interesting Engineering,
2 Nov. 2025
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Levi, an electrical engineer who founded MicroKits in 2020, has had to raise prices, slow production and pause plans to launch a new product – Banan-a-Synth – that lets kids turn a bunch of bananas into a kind of keyboard.—
Maureen Groppe,
USA Today,
2 Nov. 2025
Adjective
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According to Bruce Blair, a former Air Force launch officer and nuclear policy expert, between 1962 and the mid-1970s the most powerful digits on the globe were simple – eight zeros.—
Charlotte Reck,
CNN Money,
9 Nov. 2025
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That something as simple as a COVID vaccine might improve survival in cancer patients receiving standard immunotherapy has taken oncologists by surprise — in a good way.—
Lisa Jarvis,
Twin Cities,
8 Nov. 2025
Adjective
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In fact, the term itself was an epithet throughout the founding era, a way to describe ignorant and easily deceived popular majorities, perpetually vulnerable to demagogues.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
28 Oct. 2025
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International students are close to entirely ignorant of Canadian history and politics.—
Dónal Gill,
The Dial,
28 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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The thick artificial foliage is pre-lit with warm white LED bulbs spaced through the entire length of the 10-foot piece.—
Kate McGregor,
Architectural Digest,
5 Nov. 2025
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With more than 38,000 gallons of fuel on board the cargo flight bound for Hawaii, the crash created a massive ball of fire – punctuated by smaller explosions from flammable material on the ground – and sent a towering plume of thick black smoke into the sky.—
Karina Tsui,
CNN Money,
5 Nov. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Unintelligent.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/unintelligent. Accessed 9 Nov. 2025.
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