How to Use unpromising in a Sentence

unpromising

adjective
  • Things got off to an unpromising start.
  • She can do a lot with unpromising material.
  • Like the unpromising shape, the feel of the car is just not very sporty.
    — Kevin Smith, Car and Driver, 26 Dec. 2022
  • In short, the future feels scary and unpromising.
    — Kian Bakhtiari, Forbes.com, 1 Sep. 2025
  • Skeptics might observe that a spinoff of a spinoff sounds a little unpromising.
    — Lili Loofbourow, Washington Post, 29 Feb. 2024
  • Here is a brilliant young mind, stranded in a bleak, unpromising landscape.
    — Noel Murray, Los Angeles Times, 30 Sep. 2022
  • Then hang on for many years while keeping an eye out for any unpromising developments.
    — Dallas News, 7 June 2020
  • Amid such an unpromising start to the year, farmers caught a break from Mother Nature.
    — Evan Ramstad, Star Tribune, 9 Jan. 2021
  • In her semifinals, a slow reaction time had Richardson off to a unpromising start.
    — Talya Minsberg, New York Times, 21 Aug. 2023
  • Skillful manipulation of the grill can make unpromising odds and ends worth eating.
    — New York Times, 13 July 2021
  • But if the political process is unpromising, people working in the market are making their own progress.
    — Anchorage Daily News, 25 Mar. 2018
  • This doesn’t mean that all medical projects aimed at treating disease and disability are unpromising.
    — WIRED, 26 Sep. 2023
  • From this unpromising straw, the American natcons tried to spin the political gold of an all-out culture war.
    — Joseph C. Sternberg, WSJ, 17 Nov. 2022
  • Either that or a vegan-punk festival where the weather forecast was unpromising.
    — Geoff Dyer, GQ, 5 Feb. 2018
  • The company may be smart to wriggle out of unpromising leases, but that could force WeWork to pay penalties.
    — Washington Post, 25 Nov. 2019
  • Perhaps the most creative choice was taking poor-quality soil that wouldn’t grow vegetables and planting olive trees that thrive on those unpromising acres.
    — Shawn Tully, Fortune, 15 Apr. 2021
  • An unpromising design that has been pushed and shoved toward reasonable levels of refinement and performance.
    — Kevin Smith, Car and Driver, 4 Mar. 2023
  • Teddy’s unpromising fifth cousin—was written off as a rich, foppish lightweight with little more than an aristocratic accent and rich parents.
    — Edward Kosner, WSJ, 25 Sep. 2018
  • Ticks are resilient animals, so attempting to destroy a tick nest using force will usually yield unpromising results.
    — USA TODAY, 24 June 2023
  • The macro-level picture is also unpromising – the entire Chinese economy is slowing down (or worse).
    — George Calhoun, Forbes, 1 June 2022
  • Only Boris Johnson could take such unpromising material and turn it to his advantage.
    — Rosa Prince, CNN, 1 Feb. 2022
  • The results have been far from unpromising, notwithstanding the fog machine of an unimaginative and conformist press.
    — Holman W. Jenkins, WSJ, 20 Oct. 2020
  • Here, though, the unpromising architecture supports the paintings’ impact.
    — Christopher Knight, latimes.com, 9 Oct. 2017
  • And how will these artists, who had developed in the most unpromising of circumstances, handle the world-wide fame and celebrity that came their way in their 40s and 50s?
    — Ann Landi, WSJ, 20 Sep. 2018
  • The raw statistical material is unpromising, but politics, at the highest level, is just talk.
    — Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker, 11 Sep. 2020
  • The history of live music performance series on YouTube was also unpromising.
    — Andrew R. Chow, Time, 27 Nov. 2019
  • The results were so clearly unpromising that the researchers ended the hydroxychloroquine arm of their study prematurely.
    — Grace Huckins, Wired, 17 June 2020
  • In this unpromising milieu, the young Picasso, with his broken French and outcast friends, struggled to avoid arrest or even expulsion.
    — Hugh Eakin, Washington Post, 22 Mar. 2023
  • But no money was appropriated for reading reform beyond that amount, which would suggest an unpromising future for state support of reading reforms.
    — Alan J. Borsuk, jsonline.com, 30 Aug. 2025
  • Mariam, who’s approaching 70, couldn’t afford hundreds of dollars more, and other options looked unpromising.
    — Lily Janiak, San Francisco Chronicle, 5 Dec. 2021

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