unimportant

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *né

Proto-Indo-European *n̥-

Proto-Germanic *un-

Proto-West Germanic *un-

Old English un-

Middle English un-

English un-

English important

English unimportant

From un- + important.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌʌnɪmˈpɔːtənt/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌʌnɪmˈpɔɹtənt/
• (rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) IPA^(key): /ˌʌnɪmˈpo(ː)ɹtənt/
• (non-rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) IPA^(key): /ˌʌnɪmˈpoə.tənt/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Adjective

unimportant (comparative more unimportant, superlative most unimportant)

1. petty; not important or noteworthy

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:insignificant

   Antonym: important

   • 2009 July 12, David Orr, “Too Close to Touch”, in The New York Times Book Review‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 27 June 2025:

     It’s to the credit of this remarkable writer that those absences seem unimportant beside what is so rousingly present.

Derived terms

• unimportantly

Related terms

• unimportance

Translations

not important or noteworthy — see also irrelevant,‎ nonimportant,‎ inconsequential

• Bulgarian: маловажен (bg) (malovažen)
• Catalan: irrelevant, intranscendent
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 不重要 (bù zhòngyào)

• Czech: nedůležitý (cs)
• Danish: uvigtig
• Dutch: onbelangrijk (nl)
• Esperanto: malgrava
• Finnish: vähämerkityksellinen, vähäinen (fi)
• French: sans importance
• Galician: intranscendente, irrelevante (gl)
• Georgian: უმნიშვნელო (umnišvnelo), არამნიშვნელოვანი (aramnišvnelovani)
• German: unwichtig (de)
• Greek: ασήμαντος (el) (asímantos)
• Hungarian: lényegtelen (hu), nem fontos
• Japanese: 重要でない (ja) (じゅうようでない, jūyō denai)
• Māori: korokororiki, kūrapa, iti
• Mari:

  Eastern Mari: изи (izi)

• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: uviktig

  Nynorsk: uviktig

• Polish: nieważny (pl) m, bez znaczenia m
• Portuguese: desimportante (pt)
• Romanian: neimportant (ro)
• Russian: нева́жный (ru) (nevážnyj)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: неважан

  Latin: nevažan (sh)

• Spanish: sin importancia, poco importante
• Swedish: oviktig (sv)
• Turkish: önemsiz (tr)

  Ottoman Turkish: یسیر (yesir)

• Ukrainian: неважли́вий (nevažlývyj)