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disappointing

/ˈdɪsəˌpɔɪntɪŋ/
/dɪsəˈpɔɪntɪŋ/
IPA guide

Something that's disappointing isn't what you'd hoped for. A disappointing baseball season usually means that your favorite team lost a lot of games.

When the candidate you voted for loses, it's a disappointing election result, and a disappointing grade in your math class is lower than what you hoped or expected it would be. Disappointing comes from the verb disappoint, which means "frustrate expectations," but had an earlier definition of "remove from appointed office." The modern sense of disappoint and disappointing comes from "fail to keep an appointment."

Definitions of disappointing
  1. adjective
    not up to expectations
    “a disappointing performance from one who had seemed so promising”
    unsatisfactory
    not giving satisfaction
Pronunciation
US
/ˈdɪsəˌpɔɪntɪŋ/
UK
/dɪsəˈpɔɪntɪŋ/
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DISCLAIMER: These example sentences appear in various news sources and books to reflect the usage of the word ‘disappointing'. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Vocabulary.com or its editors. Send us feedback
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