unimpress

English

Etymology

un- +‎ impress or back formation from unimpressed

Verb

unimpress (third-person singular simple present unimpresses, present participle unimpressing, simple past and past participle unimpressed)

1. Too fail to impress positively; to leave very little impression or a bad impression;
   • 1881, William Richardson, Alma Mater: and Other Poems, page 127:

     'Twas on a morning, ere the Spring Had quickened ev'ry mortal thing, Within a place where students bring Their stomachs pranky, heads not full, Fresh as the sod, and raw from school ; To gather aids from dusty books Which unimpress their varied looks.

   • 1993, Rosalyn Alsobrook, Passion for Hire, →ISBN, page 317:

     Thinking it now more important to impress Julia than it was to unimpress Charles, Chad smoothed the sleeves of his new light-blue shirt, then bent to make certain the pant legs of his black trousers fell smoothly over his new boots.

   • 1999, Inderjit Singh Jaijee, Politics of genocide: Punjab, 1984-1998, page 112:

     ... and that the court was "therefore unimpressed by Mr Gill's assertion that incidents of this kind are deviant behaviour and an aberration on the part of individual members of the force." But there was more to unimpress the Supreme Court.

   • 2012, Rene Gutteridge, Heart of the Country, →ISBN, page 41:

     But today, Maria wanted us to meet her new and slightly older boyfriend, Walter, who seemed to thoroughly unimpress her, so I wasn't sure why we were here.