nondescript

What it means

1. archaicbiologyNot described (in the academic literature).

   Synonyms: undescribed, unidentified

2. Without distinguishing qualities or characteristics.

   He drove a nondescript silver sedan.

   4 more examples

   There was, besides, a Scots mason, known from his favourite dish as "Irish Stew," three or four nondescript Scots, a fine young Irishman, O'Reilly, and a pair of young men who deserve a special word of condemnation.

   1895, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Second Cabin”, in The Amateur Emigrant

   In 1919, demobilisation specials from Purfleet, Essex, to the North, usually made up of nondescript, almost paintless or grey stock which had seen long wartime service, chalked with slogans, were worked through by way of Bromley and the North London line […].

   1950 April, R. A. H. Weight, “They Passed by My Window”, in Railway Magazine, pages 258-259

   We open in a grimy, fluorescent-lit military base somewhere in rural England, where the girl from the poster, Melanie (Sennia Nanua), is the star student in a class full of children who are wheeled into school—or at least, the nondescript concrete room that serves as a school—with their arms, legs, and foreheads bound to their wheelchairs by leather straps.

   2017 February 23, Katie Rife, “The Girl With All The Gifts tries to put a fresh spin on overripe zombie clichés”, in The Onion AV Club

   The plaque, of light-blue hue (a tone favoured by the Wiltshire market town's civic society), can be found on a nondescript structure just outside the station.

   2021 December 29, Stephen Roberts, “Stories and facts behind railway plaques: Chippenham (1841)”, in RAIL, number 947, page 57

   Synonyms: undescript, unexceptional, plain

In a sentence

He drove a nondescript silver sedan.

Where it comes from

1. Latindēscrīptus
2. Englishnondescript

From non- + descript (from Latin dēscrīptus, past participle of dēscrībō).

First known use: 17th c.