ill-formed
1
7.2
- adjective
- /ɪl-fɔrmd/
- Specialized
:
mal formado
- The editor rejected the manuscript because it contained several ill-formed sentences that did not follow grammatical rules.
Examples
-
OK, here is my ill-formed question, offered mainly because I knew this conversation would move quickly to ethics, and I knew that thereby it would leave me behind.
Blog text (3) -
In my experience, keeping calm while neatly slicing through their ill-formed arguments helps.
Blog text (9) -
Trampas, your assumption that there can be a solution to an ill-formed problem is... uh... creative.
Blog text (21) -
Early phases, where the ideas and information are still relatively ill-formed, and where public opinion is not well grounded, would benefit from more exploratory procedures.
Academic text (2005) -
Ahmad had argued that the Jordanian "body politic" was ill-formed and that Jordanian national identity was not, in fact, open to all citizens of Jordan.
Academic text (2000) -
Those who hold this view are thus likely to be ignorant of the origins of their conception of the history of philosophy and unlikely to discover how ill-formed their conceptions of philosophy and its history are.
Academic text (1991) -
They all say they're voting for Romney because of his economic policies (tenuous and ill-formed as they are), and that they disagree with him on gay rights.
Blog text (23) -
For example, most mass terms have clear criteria for kind membership—we know exactly what it takes for metal to be gold; but there do not seem to be clear criteria for identity—such criteria govern numbers of things, but the question "how many golds do we have?" is ill-formed at best.
Academic text (2016) -
The teacher explained that the student's essay was ill-formed due to multiple grammar errors and awkward phrasing.
-
His ill-formed question during the debate confused everyone in the audience.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
Not correct according to the facts or the answer
228
1.4
A thing that has errors or does not follow rules
41
6.7
Not correct because of a mistake
2
6.3
Not following the rules of a language
Having a grammar mistake in speech or writing
Antonyms
How Grammatical
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Ill-formed is made of ill meaning 'bad' and form meaning 'shape' or 'structure', so it literally means 'badly shaped'. So an ill-formed sentence is one that is not built correctly in grammar.