How to Use inelegant in a Sentence

inelegant

adjective
  • To some, camels are slow, even inelegant.
    — Francois Botha, Forbes.com, 7 Sep. 2025
  • Biden often says the wrong thing, the awkward thing, the inelegant thing, on the subject of race.
    — Washington Post, 11 Jan. 2021
  • In the scheme of a global pandemic, do a few inelegant words matter?
    — Rumaan Alam, The New Yorker, 19 May 2020
  • The arms are still the most inelegant part of the Focals, but that’s where most of the magic happens.
    — Lauren Goode, WIRED, 23 Oct. 2018
  • The size of the eMeet Jupiter is best described as chunky and slightly inelegant.
    — Mark Sparrow, Forbes, 16 Apr. 2021
  • For a time it was even called the Zein—an inelegant name which pays no homage to the ship’s iconic former owner.
    — Todd Plummer, Vogue, 16 Jan. 2018
  • The need to meet safety standards for road use has also brought inelegant pillars for three-point seatbelts.
    — Mike Duff, Car and Driver, 17 Aug. 2023
  • The traffic, bachelorette party buses and more inelegant tourists are far out of sight and view from up here.
    — Condé Nast, Condé Nast Traveler, 24 Feb. 2026
  • This strikes me as an inelegant way to write Tommy off the show, if that’s indeed what’s happening.
    — Louis Peitzman, Vulture, 27 Apr. 2026
  • The inelegant orange wedges that came with my school lunches were a personal insult.
    — Connie Wang, refinery29.com, 7 Sep. 2022
  • The inelegant orange wedges that came with my school lunches were a personal insult.
    — Connie Wang, refinery29.com, 4 May 2020
  • The tastiest meals are made with the best ingredients, but that doesn’t mean cooking has to be tedious or inelegant.
    — Anthony Marcusa, chicagotribune.com, 16 Nov. 2021
  • Haines’ dynamic vocals often bail out the more inelegant lyrics.
    — Ethan Beck, Pitchfork, 4 May 2026
  • The kind of grief that urges you to song is inelegant, a hot devil nearly impossible to wrestle into form.
    — Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2023
  • The obvious fix is a little bit of duct tape, an inelegant but quick repair with a resource that most households already have on hand.
    — PC Magazine, 26 Mar. 2025
  • New York’s subway was considered dirty and crime-ridden, and its stations cramped and inelegant.
    — Martine Powers, Washington Post, 8 July 2017
  • The result has been a competition that has felt, at times, unwieldy and inelegant and exhausting.
    — Sam Lee, The Athletic, 12 Dec. 2024
  • The biggest downside to this solution is that this is an inelegant fix for those who prefer slimmer cardholders.
    — Chuong Nguyen, Ars Technica, 16 Aug. 2023
  • The whole thing feels inelegant compared to Apple’s typical style.
    — Popular Science, 30 Nov. 2020
  • The set, an inelegant clash of surrealism and realism, does not help Stevenson’s cause.
    — Mitchel Benson, sacbee, 1 Nov. 2017
  • But in the hands of geologists, quantum physics has brought to light the glorious, messy, and very inelegant history of our planet.
    — Carl Zimmer, Discover Magazine, 15 Jan. 2012
  • An elegant tool with an inelegant name, Crispr-Cas9 has electrified the biotech world.
    — Jeff Wheelwright, Discover Magazine, 2 May 2016
  • Data labeling has always been a kludgy, inelegant part of the modern machine learning pipeline.
    — Rob Toews, Forbes, 12 June 2022
  • As edited, these interruptions can be jarring and inelegant, but that seems true to the experience of trauma.
    — Peter Debruge, Variety, 14 Mar. 2024
  • Climbing in requires an inelegant shuffle over the sidepod and then collapsing into the carbon-fiber racing seat.
    — Mike Duff, Car and Driver, 6 Mar. 2023
  • Many were quick to call it inelegant, unsightly, and decidedly un-Apple.
    — Yoni Heisler, BGR, 25 Mar. 2022
  • This makes the show feel inelegant, and a bit unsexy, but also exceedingly in tune with the realities of the music industry.
    — Carrie Battan, The New Yorker, 24 May 2017
  • Hence, McConnell’s conundrum, which manifested in this week’s brazen and inelegant shut-up-but-give stance.
    — Philip Elliott, Time, 7 Apr. 2021
  • In fact, this rehab stay was Robin and Susan’s understandably inelegant fix for a problem that had no solution.
    — Dave Itzkoff, HWD, 8 May 2018
  • But in that moment, nature was ironically inelegant.
    — Hannah Towey, Condé Nast Traveler, 15 Feb. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'inelegant.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: