unacceptable

1. 1
   adjective

   So unsatisfactory that it cannot reasonably be allowed, approved, or agreed to.

   The committee found the contract's payment terms unacceptable and sent it back for revision.

   Repeatedly missing safety checks is unacceptable and grounds for dismissal.

   Similarintolerable, unsatisfactory, inadmissible, inexcusable, objectionable

   Oppositeacceptable, satisfactory, tolerable, permissible

   Note

   The word is old: Middle English already had unacceptabylle, built from un- and acceptable. It is gradable, with the comparative and superlative formed as more unacceptable and most unacceptable rather than with -er or -est. A speaker can therefore rank failings, calling one proposal more unacceptable than another, or call a situation the most unacceptable of all.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   A thing, action, or situation that fails to meet what can be allowed or approved.

   Good editors know how to separate the merely clumsy from the truly unacceptable.

   The new code of conduct redrew the line between the tolerated and the unacceptable.

   Oppositeacceptable

   Note

   The noun formed from the everyday adjective works in two ways. It often appears after "the" as an abstract mass noun, but it can also be counted. Writing on new-product development in 1989, Walter A. Henry, Michael Menasco and Hirokazu Takada analyze consumers' patterns of unacceptables. That plural treats each unacceptable as a separate item to be listed, compared and grouped.

3. 3
   adjective

   Not in line with how a language is normally used by its speakers.

   Native speakers judged the construction unacceptable, even though no textbook rule explicitly bans it.

   The phrase struck the editor as unacceptable in formal written English.

   Similarungrammatical, unidiomatic, incorrect, improper

   Oppositeacceptable, grammatical, idiomatic

   Note

   Linguists use the word for a verdict given by speakers rather than by rulebooks. A sentence is unacceptable when native speakers reliably reject it as ill-formed or out of place. That makes it an observation about actual usage, kept separate from whether prescriptive grammar forbids the form. A construction can break no textbook rule and still be unacceptable to the people who speak the language.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3