unbecoming

From un- +‎ becoming. Compare Middle English unbicomelich (“unbecoming”). Equal to unbecome +‎ -ing

• IPA^(key): /ˌʌnbɪˈkʌmɪŋ/

• Audio (Southern England):

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unbecoming (comparative more unbecoming, superlative most unbecoming)

1. Not flattering, attractive or appropriate.

   She wore a rather unbecoming hairstyle.

   • 1934, Agatha Christie, chapter 3, in Murder on the Orient Express, London: HarperCollins, published 2017, page 25:

     A very small expensive black toque was hideously unbecoming to the yellow, toad-like face beneath it.

   • 2017 July 12, Moe! Ninja Girls, Japan: NTT Solmare, iOS, Android, scene: Season 7, Chapter 7, Part 2:

     ― Lily: “Don’t stare so much. It’s unbecoming. It makes you look like a country bumpkin.”

   • 2017 November 16, Jo Ellison, “Help: the gym has turned us into slobs”, in Financial Times‎:

     Being a gym bunny is simply unbecoming. Not as unbecoming, perhaps, as the bicycle bunnies, with their helmet hair, their strangely padded Lycras that suggest a degree of sexual depravity and those ridiculous clacky shoes. But we’re not very pleasing to behold.

2. Not in keeping with the expected standards of one's position.

   He was accused of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.

   • 2009 October 29, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Mr Stink, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN:

     “You must be able to smell it too, Chloe. That smell of . . . Well, I’m not going to say what it reminds me of, that would be impolite and unbecoming of a woman of my class and distinction, but it’s a bad smell.”

• unsuitable
• unfit
• indecent
• indecorous
• improper

• becoming
• befitting
• suiting

• unbecomingly
• unbecomingness

unbecoming

1. present participle and gerund of unbecome

unbecoming (plural unbecomings)

1. The process by which something unbecomes.
   • 2007, Una Chung, Contagion of Living:

     By tracing the turns from U.S. to Japan to China, we can see that becoming American, the classic ethnic American narrative, itself opens to further becomings and unbecomings and rebecomings that address mobility and ethnicization […]

• “unbecoming”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “unbecoming”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “unbecoming”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.