How to Use inept in a Sentence

inept

adjective
  • He was completely inept at sports.
  • He made an inept attempt to apologize.
  • The boy is too nervous or inept to do his part.
    — Honor Jones, The Atlantic, 3 Mar. 2026
  • But the late push wasn’t enough to make up for an inept start by both sides of the ball.
    — Rohan Nadkarni, NBC News, 23 Sep. 2024
  • So far, the Musk effort looks rather inept.
    — Thomas Elias, Mercury News, 30 Dec. 2025
  • But this isn’t just one inept team saying Sanders isn’t ready.
    — Jason Lloyd, New York Times, 9 Oct. 2025
  • The right to a speedy trial doesn’t mean much if your courts are corrupt or inept.
    — Kevin D. Williamson, National Review, 28 Jan. 2018
  • That should be the story of the game, if not for how inept the other side of the ball was.
    — Sam McDowell, Kansas City Star, 14 Sep. 2025
  • Never mind that his bunch looked as inept as ever in the opener.
    — Kevin Sherrington, Dallas News, 14 Oct. 2022
  • An inept Pittsburgh lineup tagged him for four hits and a walk.
    — Zack Meisel, New York Times, 27 Apr. 2025
  • Janet Yellen, join the other hand, was and is an inept messager.
    — George Calhoun, Forbes, 23 Sep. 2021
  • Both of these offenses are inept and struggle to score points.
    — Jaylon Thompson, USA TODAY, 25 Nov. 2022
  • The leadership in this country, on the left and the right, have proven to be inept.
    — Kweku Ramel Akyirefi Smith, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 5 June 2020
  • In the grand scheme of things, the new Space Jam isn’t hateful or inept.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 14 July 2021
  • Absent Carr, the Raiders have looked inept, both last year and this year.
    — Tom Krasovic, sandiegouniontribune.com, 13 Oct. 2017
  • The hitters on both sides in this series — some of the best in the sport — were rendered inept.
    — Matt Gelb, New York Times, 10 Oct. 2025
  • An inept alien named Zim is sent to Earth by his peers who don't want to deal with him anymore.
    — Stacey Grant, Seventeen, 15 Sep. 2022
  • Our city government has proven many times over to be inept in managing large-scale projects.
    — U T Readers, San Diego Union-Tribune, 16 Feb. 2026
  • An inept dog groomer and a limousine driver chase the latter’s dream girl cross country.
    — Los Angeles Times, 26 Mar. 2021
  • Anyway, one dad took to Reddit to rant about how this whole inept-dad thing is pretty dumb.
    — Mallory Schlossberg, Redbook, 29 Mar. 2017
  • He is rescued by the inept but loving Clarence, who has been sent to teach him the true value of his life.
    — James Matthew Wilson, WSJ, 24 Dec. 2020
  • The show revolves around a group of imbecilic dirtbags, each one more inept than the next.
    — Yohana Desta, HWD, 17 Sep. 2017
  • Foes of the head tax spent months attacking City Hall as inept and wasteful.
    — Daniel Beekman, The Seattle Times, 15 Oct. 2018
  • To be fair, The Brink is guilty of being more misguided than inept.
    — Elizabeth Kerr, The Hollywood Reporter, 16 Oct. 2017
  • There’s little for the Raiders to do with a largely inept offensive line.
    — Luca Evans, Denver Post, 7 Dec. 2025
  • Which isn’t to say that the Slow Horses are completely inept.
    — Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 29 Nov. 2023
  • This can doom Golden State against even the ineptest of franchises.
    — Connor Letourneau, SFChronicle.com, 6 Jan. 2020
  • For much of the first half Sunday, Seattle’s offense was inept and bungling.
    — Bill Pennington, New York Times, 22 Oct. 2017
  • The inept play at quarterback defines Saleh’s time with the Jets.
    — Antwan Staley, New York Daily News, 20 Jan. 2026
  • On the flip side, the reason the defenders were on the field so long is because the offense was, for the most part, inept.
    — Don Norcross, San Diego Union-Tribune, 8 Oct. 2022

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

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