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unremarkable

UK[ˌʌn.ɹɪˈmɑː.kə.bl̩]US[ˌʌn.ɹɪˈmɑɹ.kə.bl̩]
adjectiveB22 meaningsVery rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — remark sits at #3,973neutral

Unremarkable means ordinary, with nothing about it that makes you look twice. A perfectly fine street you would never describe to anybody.

It is a quiet word and mostly a neutral one, though in a description of a person it lands as a faint insult — an unremarkable man in an unremarkable coat. Medicine uses it as pure good news: a scan reported as unremarkable means nothing abnormal was found, and that is exactly what a patient wants to read. Writers like the word for setting a scene before something happens, since an unremarkable morning is how a great many novels begin.

Definitions of unremarkable

  1. 1adjectiveunremarkableOrdinary, with nothing striking about it.B2

    “The house was unremarkable in every way.”

    synonyms: nondescript, ordinary

  2. 2adjectivemedicineIn medicine, showing nothing abnormal.C1

    “The chest X-ray was unremarkable.”

Also accepted in games: unexceptional

Where it comes from

  1. French

    remarquable

  2. English

    remarkable

  3. English, today

    unremarkable

From un- + remarkable. remarkable comes from remark + able, from French remarquable.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 32 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

Related words

the remarquable family

remarkableremarkably

unremarkable — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others

  • remark