Unreliable

How to spell unreliable

10 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce unreliable

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does unreliable mean?

1. adjectiveNot able to be trusted or depended on to work, behave, or be accurate.

Unreliable in a sentence

• The old car had become too unreliable for the daily commute.

• Managers grew frustrated with the unreliable broadband at the office.

Where does unreliable come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built on the verb 'rely', which English took from the Old French 'relier', meaning 'to bind together' or 'to fasten'. That French verb descends from the Latin 'religare', formed from 're-' (back or again) and 'ligare' (to bind or tie); the same 'ligare' root sits inside 'ligament' and 'oblige'. In early English 'rely' carried the idea of binding oneself to something, which softened over the 1500s into the modern sense of depending or counting on something. The adjective 'reliable', meaning able to be depended on, was assembled with the suffix '-able' in the early nineteenth century, and the negative prefix 'un-' (simply 'not') then produced 'unreliable'. The single 'l' in the middle often tempts writers to double it, but the 'l' belongs to 'rely', which has only one.

How the word is built

• un- (not)
• reli- (from rely, to depend on)
• -able (capable of being)