Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Not stabilized or properly stabilized by ballast.
  • adjective Unsteady; wavering.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Not furnished with ballast; not kept steady by ballast or by weight; unsteady: literally or figuratively: as, unballasted wits.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Freed from ballast; having discharged ballast.
  • adjective Not furnished with ballast; not kept steady by ballast; unsteady.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Not loaded or stabilized with ballast.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

un- +‎ ballasted

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Examples

  • "unballasted" road, can be left to the reader's imagination!

    The Story of the Cambrian A Biography of a Railway

  • Observers of subsequent, similar military behaviors — from Stanley Kubrick to Michael Moore to Anthony Swofford, whose memoir Jarhead was rapturously received when it came out on the eve of the Iraq War — have tended to see psychosis to the exclusion of much else, as a presumable product of cynical, fractured times and wars unballasted with the meaning we ascribe to the Good War.

    Getting Their Guns Off 2010

  • Observers of subsequent, similar military behaviors — from Stanley Kubrick to Michael Moore to Anthony Swofford, whose memoir Jarhead was rapturously received when it came out on the eve of the Iraq War — have tended to see psychosis to the exclusion of much else, as a presumable product of cynical, fractured times and wars unballasted with the meaning we ascribe to the Good War.

    Getting Their Guns Off 2010

  • Observers of subsequent, similar military behaviors — from Stanley Kubrick to Michael Moore to Anthony Swofford, whose memoir Jarhead was rapturously received when it came out on the eve of the Iraq War — have tended to see psychosis to the exclusion of much else, as a presumable product of cynical, fractured times and wars unballasted with the meaning we ascribe to the Good War.

    Getting Their Guns Off 2010

  • At every turn we eagerly hoped to meet the hand-car, but it never came, and we jolted on from tie to tie for eleven weary miles, reaching Cowan after midnight, exhausted and sore in every muscle from frequent falls on the rough, unballasted road-bed.

    She Makes Her Mouth Small & Round & Other Stories 2010

  • At every turn we eagerly hoped to meet the hand-car, but it never came, and we jolted on from tie to tie for eleven weary miles, reaching Cowan after midnight, exhausted and sore in every muscle from frequent falls on the rough, unballasted road-bed.

    Memoirs of the Union's Three Great Civil War Generals David Widger

  • The body loomed beside us like the rolling hull of an unballasted ship.

    Swept Out to Sea Clint Webb Among the Whalers W. Bertram Foster

  • The train then went off for Pool Quay at a smart pace, considering that the rails were unballasted, and with the trucks loaded with juveniles, many of whom perhaps had this day their first trip by railway.

    The Story of the Cambrian A Biography of a Railway

  • Timid and irresolute Catharine, who desired to steer clear of the Scylla of Spanish intervention quite as much as of the Charybdis of Huguenot supremacy, trembled for the security of her unballasted bark.

    The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) Henry Martyn Baird

  • It was a rickety concern, was unballasted, and looked as if, loosely thrown together, it had never filled its original mission and had been practically abandoned.

    Bart Stirling's Road to Success Or, The Young Express Agent Allen Chapman

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