Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

inept

/ɪˈnɛpt/

Word Rarity Rare

Frequency: 3.13 in modern English

Syllables: in-ept
IPA: /ɪˈnɛpt/

7

Scrabble Score

5

Letters

2

Syllables

5

Unique Chars

Meaning

adj

Not able to do something; not proficient; displaying incompetence.

adj

Unfit; unsuitable.

Example Sentences

"As a waiter, he was inept, so they put him in the kitchen."
"Stewing over recent legal defeats, he [Donald Trump] spent Sunday night posting a series of rambling rants assailing the “completely inept and embarrassing” Supreme Court, the “Deranged” former special counsel, […] and “a Wacky, Nasty, Crooked, and totally Out of Control Judge” who ruled against him."
"The bungled phrase, the slipshod paragraph, the inept metaphor, the irrelevant excursion, the disproportionate development, the feeble conclusion, are indeed all failures of meaning, and the more poetically ambitious the verbal structure in which they occur, the deeper and more substantive the failure may be."

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French inepte, from Latin ineptus, from in- + aptus (whence English apt).

Origin

Source language: Middle French

Word Breakdown

Root: inepte, ineptus

Regional Pronunciation

American English: /ɪˈnɛpt/
British English: /ɪˈnɛpt/

Inflected Forms

more inept (comparative) most inept (superlative)

Derived Forms

ept ineptitude ineptly ineptness

Synonyms

tactless feckless awkward clumsy cumbersome inapt ill-chosen

Antonyms

apt adept skillful

Rhymes With

except kept accept sept stepped slept swept intercept adept wept crept leapt

Questions

How do you pronounce inept?: The recorded pronunciation is /ɪˈnɛpt/.
What does inept mean?: Not able to do something; not proficient; displaying incompetence.
Where does inept come from?: It is traced to Middle French.

How to pronounce inept

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “inept”.
Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling (/ɪˈnɛpt/) so you know which sounds to aim for.
Play the audio — Click Play to hear reference audio for “inept”.
Repeat and practice — Say “inept” aloud, matching stress and vowels until it feels natural.