- Today's Word
Unprepossessing
un-pree-puh-ZES-ing
Definition
(adjective) Failing to create a favorable impression; not attractive or appealing in appearance or manner.
Example
The building was thoroughly unprepossessing from the outside — a fact that made the extraordinary collection housed within it feel like a secret the city was keeping for itself.
Word Origin
Unprepossessing is built from un- (“not”) and prepossessing — itself from prepossess, meaning “to occupy beforehand” or “to create a favorable impression in advance.” Prepossess derives from pre- (“before”) and possess, from the Latin possidere — “to occupy.” To prepossess someone was to occupy their judgment favorably before they had fully assessed you. Something unprepossessing fails to do this — it arrives without advance notice of its own merit and makes no argument for itself through appearance alone.
Fun Fact
The unprepossessing exterior as deliberate strategy has a long and distinguished history in architecture. The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Morgan Library in New York, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston all present relatively modest or confusing exteriors that give no hint of what lies within — a choice that art historians argue is either accidental, practical, or a deliberate curatorial statement about the relationship between surface and substance. The Gardner Museum takes this furthest: its Venetian palazzo exterior on a Boston street is so incongruous it reads as almost surreal, which is possibly the point. Gardner herself was famously unprepossessing in manner, which those who knew her reported was the last accurate judgment anyone made about her.
