How to Use unintended in a Sentence

unintended

adjective
  • And that’s where bias and big legalese can cause unintended problems.
    — Ellen McGirt, Fortune, 25 Jan. 2022
  • Which is scary to know your movie can have an unintended consequence.
    — Ben Flanagan | [email protected], al, 14 Apr. 2022
  • It can be seen as a poster child for unintended consequences.
    — Thomas G. Moukawsher, Newsweek, 5 Nov. 2024
  • Here are three common terms that come with some unintended baggage.
    — Jim Richberg, Forbes, 5 Jan. 2022
  • Words still matter but in unintended ways.
    — Hussein Agha, New Yorker, 22 Aug. 2025
  • And, again, this is that whole rule of unintended consequences, right?
    — ABC News, 5 Sep. 2021
  • This change is painful for those women who have unintended pregnancy, many will face a hard life.
    — Fox News, 25 June 2022
  • Yet their snowflake-like beauty was unintended.
    — Big Think, 27 Mar. 2026
  • But a chronic lack of sleep affects many body functions, and could lead to unintended weight gain.
    — Amber J. Tresca, Verywell Health, 16 Dec. 2024
  • First, eggs are fragile and one unintended door slam could create a giant mess.
    — Kait Hanson, Southern Living, 7 June 2026
  • First, eggs are fragile and one unintended door slam could create a giant mess.
    — Kait Hanson, Southern Living, 20 Aug. 2025
  • Of course, the unintended consequence was that bell ringers ended up in harm’s way.
    — The New Yorker, 29 Nov. 2021
  • Yet shooting a horror movie in his home had an unintended effect.
    — William Earl, Variety, 22 Jan. 2026
  • But some warn such acts can have unintended consequences.
    — Sydney Barragan, Oc Register, 13 Sep. 2025
  • The unintended consequences of more than a decade of easy money are still lurking in the wings.
    — Alan Murray, Fortune, 28 Aug. 2023
  • So this is an unintended effect.
    — Gabrielle Emanuel, NPR, 17 Apr. 2026
  • Tip the scales too far either way, and unintended damage follows.
    — Jane Sparrow, Forbes.com, 22 May 2026
  • None of this is cheap, and the risks of unintended consequences — and questions about whether these ideas even work — loom large.
    — Michael Smolens, San Diego Union-Tribune, 7 Apr. 2024
  • And then the unintended consequences hurt kids that are trying to do it the right way with a process, not jumping around.
    — Ryan Morik, FOXNews.com, 22 Oct. 2025
  • The world ships too much code, most of it by third parties, sometimes unintended, most of it uninspected.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 6 Feb. 2024
  • Change is coming, and even changes made for the best of reasons have unintended consequences.
    — Greg Moore, The Arizona Republic, 31 Dec. 2022
  • Policy that doesn’t will at best fall short of its goals, and at worst lead to dire, if unintended, consequences.
    — Fei-Fei Li, Fortune, 6 Aug. 2024
  • Friends who arrived at my door teary-eyed forced the unintended response of me having to grieve with them on their timetable, rather than my own.
    — Alisyn Camerota, CNN, 12 Oct. 2024
  • Going back to the story of me on the beach with my father, there can be a lot of unintended consequences.
    — Amy X. Wang, Rolling Stone, 5 May 2021
  • And one of the unintended effects has been the beginning of the end of the workplace filter.
    — Molly Longman, refinery29.com, 21 Apr. 2022
  • Eight months later he’s now accused of taking part in a shooting that took the life of an unintended target.
    — Alexa Ashwell, Baltimore Sun, 30 Nov. 2024
  • But sometimes, our desire to do the right thing leads to unintended consequences.
    — Stephanie Dillon, Rolling Stone, 12 Apr. 2023
  • United teams of the past decade have been good at seizing on the unintended errors of opponents.
    — Carl Anka, New York Times, 31 Jan. 2026
  • But over time, the lack of boundaries and limits can have unintended consequences.
    — Christin Perry, Parents, 17 Aug. 2023
  • Even a small change to the process can have massive unintended consequences on the rest of the industry.
    — Julian Epp, The New Republic, 5 Nov. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'unintended.' 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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