adverb

• 1In an unhappy manner.

  ‘‘The other international students don't take me seriously any more,’ he noted unhappily.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘But wouldn't they rather see you happily unmarried than unhappily married?’
  • ‘He and Ann, pausing unhappily outside in the hall, tiptoeing on the threadbare rug, could hear nothing from inside.’
  • ‘The gulfs that separate the three families, however, do not prevent their children from intermarrying, for the most part unhappily.’
  • ‘They play urban refugees - an unhappily married man and a coffee-shop girl burdened by her ill father - on the threshold of potential love.’
  • ‘While everyone around him is in a committed relationship, he continues to find himself either unhappily involved or single all together.’
  • ‘He was unhappily married, bored with parish duties and ill-equipped to climb the ecclesiastical greasy pole, but his talents were finally being recognised.’
  • ‘We all make mistakes and if people in everyday life were to take as serious a view of our errors as young cricketers do of umpires' decisions I am afraid we should be somewhat unhappily situated.’
  • ‘The story ended unhappily for all parties concerned: Harris was disgraced and his reputation exploded, but the forgers were also hounded out of Australia.’
  • ‘Depending on your point of view, this is either a dewy-eyed romantic tale about two former lovers or a story about an unhappily married man looking to have sex with an old girlfriend.’
  • ‘Averagely attractive, generally assumed to be gay, though he isn't, he seems unhappily doomed to heterosexual singlehood.’
  • ‘The dog, a small golden retriever, stood unhappily, her head low.’
  • ‘I've felt so alone… Everybody I know is happily single, unhappily single with no options or happily hitched.’
  • ‘I will supply what evidence we have, what reports we have honestly, and then happily leave it or unhappily leave it to the Council.’
  • ‘He lives in the smartest house in the area, and is unhappily married to the beautiful Solema, a teacher of radical views and adulterous instincts.’
  • ‘While many happy human-animal relationships have begun with pet shop animals, there are many others which have ended unhappily.’
  • ‘Professor Albeit is about a professor who wants to be a magician but is unhappily stuck teaching mathematics, till he bumps into a beautiful woman.’
  • ‘They're kind of like an unhappily married couple, actually.’
  • ‘And local authorities conceded unhappily that they were bound by the territory's Basic Law on business matters.’
  • ‘Unfortunately, Langevin was married - unhappily, but nonetheless married.’

  1. 1.1sentence adverb Unfortunately.
     ‘unhappily, such days do not come too often’
     More example sentences

     • ‘This, unhappily and unfortunately, is nonsense.’
     • ‘This loss is the more to be lamented, because the heir to his fortunes is unhappily not the heir to his graces.’
     • ‘Happily or unhappily, depending on which way you view it, the blonde in question is likely to be the company's yet-to-be-launched new brew - an oak-aged pale ale.’
     • ‘For all that it kept up with the game by operating a pan-Scotland chain and by selling books on the internet, the firm was in a state of gentle decline which was unhappily all too obvious to its customers.’
     • ‘Gluttony, Orson Welles once said ruefully, is not a secret vice and unhappily the solution to weight loss is also blindingly obvious - whatever you eat, eat less.’
     Synonyms

     unluckily, sadly, regrettably, unhappily, woefully, lamentably, alas, sad to say, sad to relate