nondescript

nondescript

English

Etymology

From non- +‎ descript.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈnɒndɪskɹɪpt/
• (US) IPA^(key): /nɑndəsˈkɹɪpt/

• Audio (US)

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Adjective

nondescript (comparative more nondescript, superlative most nondescript)

1. (biology, now rare) Not described (in the academic literature).

   Synonyms: undescribed, unidentified

2. Without distinguishing qualities or characteristics.

   Synonyms: (nonstandard) undescript, unexceptional

   He drove a nondescript silver sedan.

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

     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.

   • 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:

     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.

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

     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.

Translations

biology: not described

Finnish: tunnistamaton (fi)

without distinguishing qualities

Bulgarian: неопределен (bg) (neopredelen) Finnish: mitäänsanomaton (fi) French: banal (fr), quelconque (fr) Spanish: indescriptivo m

Noun

nondescript (plural nondescripts)

1. (chiefly biology) A species or other type of creature that has not been previously described or identified. [from 17th c.]
   • 1791, Thomas Paine, Rights of Man:

     Imagination has given figure and character to centaurs, satyrs, and down to all the fairy tribe; but titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and are a chimerical non-descript.

2. An undistinguished, unexceptional person or thing. [from 18th c.]
   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 6, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, OCLC 57395299:

     In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign parts.

3. (UK) An unmarked police car.
   • 1970, Peter Laurie, Scotland Yard: a study of the Metropolitan Police (page 118)

     By a nice British compromise, the enforcement car — visible just then as a white spot on the television screen — has nothing externally to show its police affiliation, but unlike the CID's nondescripts, carries two large policemen in uniform.

Anagrams

• nonscripted