Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Lacking material substance; insubstantial.
- adj. Lacking firmness or strength; flimsy.
- adj. Lacking basis in fact.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Not substantial; not solid: as, unsubstantial air. Not real; not having substance; imaginary; illusive: as, unsubstantial forms. Not having good substance; not strong or stout: as, an unsubstantial building; unsubstantial cloth.
- Not giving substance or strength; weak; not strengthening or invigorating.
Wiktionary
- adj. archaic Alternative form of insubstantial.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Lacking in matter or substance; visionary; chimerical.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. lacking material form or substance; unreal.
Examples
“Something like a London fog" it has been called, "only a dust fog," – an animated fog in which everything unsubstantial is fair prey.”
“Even before the protests, female political power and representation in Mubarak's Egypt was unsubstantial and token at best.”
The Huffington Post: Ehsan Zaffar: The Revolution Isn't Over for the Women of Tahrir Square
“To say that Colbert's testimony was surprisingly unsubstantial, if funny, would be unfair, because it would imply we expected celebrity testimony before congress to be anything other than unsubstantial.”
The Washington Post: Stephen Colbert testimony: a mockery, but of whom?
“There's nothing like emotional substance, even in an ostensibly unsubstantial thriller.”
The Wall Street Journal: 'Contraband': Almost Illegally Entertaining
“Funny that a video about information literacy includes such an unsubstantial claim.”
What is Information Literacy? (Otis College) « Information Literacy Videos « Videos « Literacy News
“Front, Churchill in his latest push had expressed unshaken confidence in the allied conduct of the war, and Roosevelt according to a recent speech was supremely optimistic as to the final outcome of the conflict, all very vague and unsubstantial, but, heartening, never the less.”
“You never report facts until unsubstantial claims contrary to the truth have been proven false, ( 'ie death panels, the public option is a government take over of health care), and then you want to do your so called fact check, it's more like, after the fact check.”
“His flesh as unsubstantial as cobwebs, veins and arteries, tendons and muscles all clear beneath the ethereal shine of translucent skin.”
“But I still think it remains a fair question: Would the not-unsubstantial investment in an MSR mission designed to ferry a cache of tiny surface scratchings to earthside labs be all that more efficient/cost-effective than sending along a team of trained geologists to manage the collection with a robust on-site laboratory available for immediate assessment of specimen value?”
“Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; it consists of the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homogeneous human labor, of labour-power expended without regard to the mode of its expenditure.”
skzbrust: Capital Volume 1 Part 1 Chapter 1 Section 1 Post 3
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oroboros Cf. insubstantial
Sep 25, 2010