inept

Borrowed from Middle French inepte, from Latin ineptus, from in- + aptus (whence English apt).

• (UK, US, Canada) IPA^(key): /ɪˈnɛpt/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /ɪˈnept/

Rhymes: -ɛpt

inept (comparative more inept, superlative most inept)

1. Not able to do something; not proficient; displaying incompetence.

   As a waiter, he was inept, so they put him in the kitchen.

2. Unfit; unsuitable.
   • 1954, W. K. Wimsatt, The Verbal Icon‎^[1], University Press of Kentucky, page xiii:

     The bungled phrase, the slipshod paragraph, the inept metaphor, the irrelevant excursion, the disproportionate development, the feeble conclusion, are indeed all failures of meaning, and the more poetically ambitious the verbal structure in which they occur, the deeper and more substantive the failure may be.

• apt
• adept
• skillful

• ept
• ineptitude
• ineptly

• nepit

Borrowed from French inepte, from Latin ineptus.

inept m or n (feminine singular ineptă, masculine plural inepți, feminine and neuter plural inepte)

1. inept