Unsubstantial

Definition: Unsubstantial

Unsubstantial

Adjective

1. Lacking material form or substance; unreal; "as insubstantial as a dream"; "an insubstantial mirage on the horizon".

Date "unsubstantial" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1321. (references)

Synonyms: Unsubstantial

Synonyms: insubstantial (adj), unreal (adj). (additional references)

Antonym: substantial (adj). (additional references)

Context	Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).
Error	Adjective: erroneous, untrue, false, devoid of truth, fallacious, apocryphal, unreal, ungrounded, groundless; unsubstantial; heretical; (heterodox); unsound; illogical.
Inexistence	Unreal, potential, virtual; baseless, in nubibus; unsubstantial; vain.
Rarity	Rarefied. Verb:; unsubstantial; uncompact, incompressed; rarefiable.
Unsubstantiality	Adjective: unsubstantial; baseless, groundless; ungrounded; without foundation, having no foundation.
Weakness	Frail, fragile, shattery; flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread; rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky; craichy; drooping, tottering; Verb:.
Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.

Crosswords: Unsubstantial

English words defined with "unsubstantial": Cloud-built ♦ Folious ♦ Incorporeal hereditament ♦ soap bubble, Substanceless. (references)

Etymologies containing "unsubstantial": Substanceless. (references)

Author	Quotation
Aristophanes	Mankind, fleet of life, like tree leaves, weak creatures of clay, unsubstantial as shadows, wingless, ephemeral, wretched, mortal and dreamlike.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

Title	Author	Quote
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man	Joyce, James	He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

Subject	Topic	Quote
Economic History	Oman	An LNG processing plant located in Sur was opened in 2000, with production capacity of 6.6 million tons/YR, as well as unsubstantial gas liquids, including condensates. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.

"Unsubstantial" is generally used as an adjective (general or positive) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Unsubstantial" is used about 4 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Adjective (general or positive)	100%	4	175,879

Language		Translations for "unsubstantial"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Albanian		joreal (aerial, aeriform, imaginary, insubstantial, notional, off balance, unreal), jomaterial (immaterial), i papeshë (ethereal, insignificant, weightless). (various references)

Arabic		‏لا أساس له (baseless, groundless), ‏وهمي (airy, airy fairy, astral, chimerical, delusive, delusory, dummy, fallacious, fanciful, fantastic, made up, mirage, mythical, notional, paper, phantom, putative, quixotic, romantic, subjective, unreal, utopian, visionary), ‏ضعيف (atonic, cold, crazy, deficient, delicate, dim, emaciated, enervate, faint, feckless, feeble, flabby, flagging, fragile, frail, haggard, helpless, impotent, inaudible, infirm, invertebrate, lame, languid, languorous, lank, lean, limp, little, low, lower, nerveless, pale, powered, powerless, puny, rickety, run down, scant, scrawny, slender, slight, slim, small, soft, softy, streaked, supine, tenuous, thin, thready, toothless, wan, weak, weakened, weakling, weakly, wimp, wishy washy). (various references)

Bulgarian		несъществен (accidental, incidental, inessential, insubstantial, non essential, pasteboard, trivial, unessential), несолиден (flimsy, jerry-build, ramshackle), нереален (aerial, aeriform, chimerical, fanciful, ideal, insubstantial, metaphysical, unreal, vaporous), нетелесен, невеществен (bodiless, immaterial, incorporeal, insubstantial), нематериален (immaterial, incorporeal, metaphysical, moral, platonic), лек (airy, bland, cool, cure, cushy, easy, expedite, facile, fairy, flimsy, gentle, gossamer, gossamery, gradual, lambent, lenient, light, lightsome, lightweight, medicine, mild, mobile, potty, quiet, remedy, skyey, slick, slight, snap, soft, subtle, tenuous, unsound), без тегло, без маса, празен (airy, airy fairy, bare, barren, blank, empty, hollow, idle, inane, light, loose, piffling, pithless, purposeless, sounding, superficial, uncharged, untenanted, vacant, vacuous, vain, void, yeasty), призрачен (dreamy, ghostly, phantasmal, shadowy, spectral, spooky, unearthly, visionary). (various references)

Czech		nehmotný (immaterial, incorporeal, intangible). (various references)

Finnish		hatara (flimsy, loose, poorly constructed, ramshackle, vague). (various references)

French		peu solide, non fondé, insuffisant (unsatisfying). (various references)

German		ungerechtfertigt (uncalled for, unjustifiably, unjustified, unwarranted), nicht schlagkräftig, nicht überzeugend (inconclusive, unconvincable, unconvincing, unpersuasive, unsatisfactory), leicht (easily, easy, effortless, effortlessly, facile, facilely, gentle, gossamerly, light, lighthearted, lightly, lightweight, loose, lower-level, mild, mildly, minor, nimbly, petty, readily, simple, slight, slightly, smooth, softly, sprightly, thinly), körperlos (bodiless, disembodied, incorporeal), dürftig (feeble, impoverished, insubstantial, lame, meager, meagre, miserable, necessitous, paltry, pathetic, penurious, penuriously, pitiable, poor, poorly, scant, scanty, sketchy, skimpily, skimpy, slender, spare, sparse, sparsely, tenuous, thinly, wretched). (various references)

Greek		επουσιώδησ (circumstantial, immaterial, insubstantial, non essential, nonessential, unessential). (various references)

Hungarian		anyagtalan. (various references)

Italian		immateriale (immaterial, incorporeal). (various references)

Pig Latin		ubstantialunsay

Portuguese		insubstancial (insubstantial), imaterial (aerial, bodiless, etherial, immaterial, incorporeal, insubstantial, intangible, overground, spiritual). (various references)

Romanian		inconsistent (flabby, flimsy, groundless, insubstantial, soft), imaterial (aeriform, aery, ghostly, immaterial, incorporeal, insubstantial, spiritual), aerian (aerial, aeriform, aery, airy, breezy, ethereal, featherlike, gaseous, gauzy, hazy, skyey, thin). (various references)

Russian		невесомый (imponderable, weightless), непрочный (built on sand, flimsy, frail, groggy, haywire, insubstantial, perishable, rotten, sleazy), непитательный. (various references)

Serbo-Croatian		neznatan (inconsiderable, insignificant, little, negligible, twopenny-halfpenny), nebitan (inessential, odd, unessential). (various references)

Spanish		insubstancial (insubstantial). (various references)

Turkish		hafif (airy, blancmange, cushy, digestible, distant, dulcet, easy of digestion, feeble, feint, frail, frivolous, lenient, light, lightly, lightweight, loose, mild, piano, slight, small, soft, subdued, tenuous, unsound, weak, wishy washy), gerçekte olmayan, gerçek dışı (delusive, fanciful, imaginary, insubstantial, phantasmal, unreal), besleyici olmayan, önemsiz (back burner, derisive, derisory, dinky, empty, fiddling, footling, immaterial, inconsequential, inconsiderable, inconspicuous, indifferent, inessential, insignificant, jerkwater, minute, negligible, no-account, non essential, nonessential, not healthy, not worth a fig, null, of no account, of no significance, of no worth, one horse, paltry, paper, peanut, peddling, petty, picayune, picayunish, piddling, poky, potty, quotidian, scrubby, secondary, slight, small, smalltime, trifling, trivial, tuppeny, unessential, unimportant, worthless, yeasty). (various references)

Ukrainian		неістотний (accidental, immaterial, incidental, non essential, slim, unessential), нереальний (aerial, aeriform, airy, delusive, delusory, imaginary, unreal, vaporous), неміцний (insubstantial, rotten, shaky, sketchy, sleazy, slight, ticklish, unwholesome, weak), непоживний (poor), безтілесний (asomatous, bodiless, ethereal, incorporeal). (various references)

Vietnamese		không chắc chắn; yếu đuối, không có thật không vững chắc. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

Derivations
	Words beginning with "unsubstantial": unsubstantialities, unsubstantiality, unsubstantially. (additional references)
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

Words rhyming with "unsubstantial" (pronounced 'Un`sub*stan"tial'): Abbatial, Accrementitial, Agential, Antenuptial, Beneficential, bigential, Circumferential, Coessential, Coinitial, Comitial, Complacential, Concupiscential, Conferential, Confidential, Consequential, Consubstantial, Deferential, exponential, Futuritial, IMPARTIAL, inconsequential, inessential, inferential, insubstantial, interstitial, jurisprudential, martial, Nutritial, Obediential, Omnipresential, partial, Pestilential, Postnuptial, Precedential, Preceptial, Preferential, Prelatial, Preputial, Presential, Presidential, Primatial, Primitial, Providential, Querulential, Quintessential, Recrementitial, referential, Reminiscential, residential, reverential. (additional references)

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-a-b-i-l-n-n-s-s-t-t-u-u"
	-2 letters: substantial.
	-4 letters: annalists, insulants, lutanists.
	-5 letters: abstains, abuttals, annalist, biannual, instants, insulant, lutanist, nautilus, satanist, stunsail, subnasal, subunits, sultanas, tantalus, tubaists, tubulins.
	Words containing the letters "a-a-b-i-l-n-n-s-s-t-t-u-u"
	+2 letters: unsubstantially.
	+3 letters: unsubstantiality.
	+5 letters: unsubstantialities.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.