ill-formed
adjective
Simple meaning
Not grammatical; not conforming to the rules of grammar or accepted usage.
Pronunciation
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Not grammatical; not conforming to the rules of grammar or accepted usage
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: Not grammatical; not conforming to the rules of grammar or accepted usage
Used this way, ill-formed is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a grammar or language-study use: it describes how language works, so it appears in teaching and reference writing.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Academic writing
- Education/classroom
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: not grammatical
Antonyms
Sense: not grammatical
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.