Unpopular means not liked by many people. An unpopular decision, unpopular at school, deeply unpopular.

It counts rather than judges: an unpopular decision may be the right one, and saying so is the standard defence of any hard choice. Unpopular opinion is now a set phrase used to introduce a view the speaker expects to be argued with. Note popularity, unpopularity; and that popular comes from the Latin for the people.

Definitions of unpopular

1adjectiveunpopularNot liked by many people.B2
“The new parking charges are deeply unpopular with local shopkeepers.”

unpopular is a quality of not being liked.

Where it comes from

Middle English
populer
English
popular
English, today
unpopular

From un- + popular. popular comes from Middle English populer.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Word Building

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unpopular in the wild

According to Geoffrey, Keredic's rule was so unpopular that the Saxons enlisted the aid of an army of Vandals from Ireland to drive him from his kingdom.
Keredic
However, the term has other uses, and the scholar Misha Grifka-Wander has argued that it is both unpopular and inaccurate.
Hard fantasy
Robert Walpole's increasingly unpopular Whig government lost ground to the Tories and the opposition Whigs, but still had a secure majority in the House of Commons.
1734 British general election
The changes were unpopular with residents and soon undone; the loop was later used to connect the Canarsie Line to the Broadway Elevated.
East New York Loop
Although widely adopted in cities, the Pahlavi hat was initially perceived as 'foreign' and proved deeply unpopular.
Pahlavi hat

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

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