ill-defined

adjective

: not easy to see or understand
The property's borders are ill-defined.
an ill-defined mission

Examples of ill-defined in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web But 40 years ago, the characteristics of a promising root system were ill-defined. Maddie Bender, Smithsonian Magazine, 19 Mar. 2024 But the suit does perhaps helpfully focus attention on how fraught and ill-defined a concept AGI is. Jeremy Kahn, Fortune, 5 Mar. 2024 But the regulations for leadership PACs have been ill-defined since the FEC authorized the committees in the late 1970s. Paul Pringle, Los Angeles Times, 29 Feb. 2024 The Treaty of Paris, which was signed in 1783 and ended the American Revolution, left the dividing line between what is now Quebec and New Hampshire ill-defined. Jazmine Ulloa, New York Times, 22 Jan. 2024 Though ill-defined, Putin made clear that his objectives were tantamount to Kyiv’s capitulation. Mary Ilyushina, Washington Post, 14 Dec. 2023 An imbalance of these microbes are associated with certain infections and medical conditions, such as bacterial vaginosis (BV), a painful condition that affects about 30 percent of women between the ages of 14 and 49 in the U.S. Bacterial vaginosis is very ill-defined, Ravel says. Lori Youmshajekian, Scientific American, 6 Dec. 2023 Just what constitutes best practice remains ill-defined. Tik Root, WIRED, 5 July 2023 After all, for centuries, Ukrainians have tended to identify more with grassroots movements or solitary heroes—the nineteenth-century poet Taras Shevchenko, say, or the anti-Soviet dissident Vasyl Stus—than with nonexistent or ill-defined national institutions. Nataliya Gumenyuk, Foreign Affairs, 24 Feb. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'ill-defined.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Dictionary Entries Near ill-defined

Cite this Entry

“Ill-defined.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ill-defined. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.

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