Meanings
present singular third person unflatters · participle present unflattering · participle past unflattered · past unflattered
- transitiveTo show or display in a bad light; to portray unfavorably.
Well, sith thy truth unflatters me, I will believe it truth.
1918, Bernard Edward Joseph Capes, Where England Sets Her Feet: A Romance, page 2292 more examples
He switched promptly from the escapist fantasy of young-white-male-orientated comic books to the cauterizing realism of Richard Wright, whose fiction unflatters the United States, condemning it as dehumanizing and coercively deathly for blacks (JanMohamed 2005).
2008, Christopher N. Okonkwo, A Spirit of DialogueMainstream media “unflatters” the demos and its rulers daily.
2018, Marlene K. Sokolon, Travis D. Smith, Flattering the Demos: Fiction and Democratic Education, →ISBN, page 137Synonyms: besmirch, denigrate, diss, assassinate, asperse, backbite, badmouth, befoul · Antonyms: flatter, brush up to, collogue, flatter, flatterize, glaver, gloze, jolly
Synonyms & antonyms
verbTo show or display in a bad light; to portray unfavorably.
Origin
Cite this entry
unflatter. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/unflatter
“unflatter.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/unflatter. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “unflatter,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/unflatter.
Source: unflatter on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.