How to Use unprepared in a Sentence

unprepared

adjective
  • But this year, many were caught unprepared.
    — Los Angeles Times, 23 May 2026
  • Invest now to make sure the world is not caught unprepared again.
    — Sasha Rogelberg, Fortune, 31 Oct. 2024
  • But the prison was unprepared to deal with the bloodshed.
    — Kristine Phillips, IndyStar, 4 Nov. 2025
  • The team has looked unprepared to start the season.
    — Matthew Fairburn, New York Times, 12 Oct. 2025
  • Yet, the Gators still looked unprepared.
    — Noah White, Miami Herald, 7 Sep. 2025
  • Passing a child who is unprepared may be the cruelest act of all.
    — Harriette Cole, Mercury News, 20 June 2026
  • Trust becomes a tax on the unprepared.
    — Vivian Toh, Forbes.com, 26 Jan. 2026
  • Many are simply unprepared for the new landscape that awaits them.
    — Fortune, 31 July 2019
  • Because this was a first for the agency, staff were unprepared for how to best care for the fish.
    — Maria Figueroa, Sacbee.com, 6 Aug. 2025
  • Ill equipped and unprepared to counter such a force, many surrendered.
    — Michael Kofman, Foreign Affairs, 2 Sep. 2024
  • Yet these women rarely went unprepared.
    — Literary Hub, 24 Feb. 2026
  • The hiker appeared to be unprepared to be on the trail and seemed to avoid others.
    — Natalie Neysa Alund, USA Today, 13 June 2025
  • Two teens got caught up in a system unprepared to handle kids on either side of the drug trade.
    — Lizzie Presser, ProPublica, 28 Sep. 2024
  • Gaye showed up for the session with his golf clubs, late and unprepared, and nailed the song in one perfect take.
    — Gavin Edwards, BostonGlobe.com, 9 Aug. 2022
  • The real problem is how unprepared the world remains to stop it.
    — Emil Sayegh, Forbes.com, 30 June 2025
  • This may be true, but the day after has a habit of sneaking up while the parties are unprepared.
    — Dahlia Scheindlin, The New Republic, 3 Nov. 2023
  • Each time, the platform was unprepared to respond to what its users were doing.
    — Shane Harris, Washington Post, 12 Dec. 2023
  • The hiker had no backup equipment and was unprepared to spend the night.
    — David Chiu, PEOPLE, 1 Nov. 2025
  • Diplomatic staff in many cities were unprepared for the long lines of expats.
    — Christine Armario, Washington Post, 27 July 2024
  • Najjar, his nephew and dozens of their comrades seemed unprepared for what was to come.
    — Washington Post, 14 Oct. 2020
  • Peter isn’t just unprepared to care for a child; the idea of children is almost alien to him.
    — Alison Willmore, Vulture, 15 May 2026
  • Governments are not fond of being unprepared for the same thing twice.
    — Jacqueline Detwiler, Popular Mechanics, 5 July 2019
  • Because people were unprepared for the rainstorm, some tourists were trapped in the city.
    — Larissa Gao, NBC News, 8 Sep. 2023
  • So the people coming to save them are untrained and unprepared.
    — Lindsay Kornick, Fox News, 21 June 2022
  • Most firms are unprepared until issues arise.
    — Expert Panel®, Forbes.com, 27 Aug. 2025
  • The result will be a track meet that the kids from Houston are wholly unprepared for.
    — Jeremy Cluff, The Arizona Republic, 30 Oct. 2022
  • Despite this, many still feel unprepared when exam week arrives.
    — Ascend Agency, Mercury News, 22 Dec. 2025
  • Yet, if this is true, why did society feel so unprepared for the changes that the pandemic brought us?
    — Anja Honnefelder, Forbes, 11 July 2022
  • No one is going to come to the Olympics and catch a Katie Ledecky unprepared.
    — Paul Newberry, Anchorage Daily News, 26 July 2021
  • This car will induce whiplash in the unprepared and expletives from those who have been forewarned.
    — Tim Stevens, ArsTechnica, 26 May 2026

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