different between unpleasant vs dicey

English

Etymology

From Middle English unplesaunt, equivalent to un- +? pleasant.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?n?plez?nt/

Adjective

unpleasant (comparative unpleasanter or more unpleasant, superlative unpleasantest or most unpleasant)

1. Not pleasant.
   • c. 1596, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene 2,^[1]

     O sweet Portia,

     Here are a few of the unpleasant’st words

     That ever blotted paper!

   • 1722, Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, London: E. Nutt, p. 214,^[2]

     It was indeed one admirable piece of Conduct in the said Magistrates, that the Streets were kept constantly clear, and free from all manner of frightful Objects, dead Bodies, or any such things as were indecent or unpleasant, unless where any Body fell down suddenly or died in the Streets […]

   • 1811, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 35,^[3]

     The very circumstance, in its unpleasantest form, which they would each have been most anxious to avoid, had fallen on them.

   • 1865, Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 1,^[4]

     […] she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them […]

   • 1921, Walter de la Mare, Memoirs of a Midget, Chapter 37,^[5]

     And I dipped into novels so like the unpleasanter parts of my own life that they might just as well have been autobiographies.

Derived terms

• unpleasantness

Synonyms

• disagreeable

Translations

Anagrams

• pennatulas

English

Etymology

dice +? -y

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?da?si/

Adjective

dicey (comparative dicier, superlative diciest)

1. Fraught with danger.
2. Of uncertain, risky outcome.
   • 2012, Jonathan Deutsch, Natalya Murakhver (editors), They Eat That?: A Cultural Encyclopedia of Weird and Exotic Food from Around the World, page 161,

     Devouring the flesh of animals killed on roadways can be a bit dicey.

3. Of doubtful or uncertain efficacy, provenance, etc.; dodgy.
   • 1992, Vincent O'Sullivan, The Witness Man, in Palms and Minarets: Selected Stories, page 95,

     As if I'm not a bit past that, Clem thought, as if with his dicey ticker and all he shouldn?t be taking life pretty quietly, instead of waking with the old memoroes disturbing him.

   • 2011, Jay Baer, Amber Naslund, The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social, page xv,

     If you were in the business of selling dicey meat, the invention of the telephone rocked your world.

4. (slang) Nauseating, rank.

Synonyms

• chancy
• iffy

Translations