unlikely

From Middle English unlykely, unlikly, unlykly, unlicli, equivalent to un- +‎ likely.

• IPA^(key): /ʌnˈlaɪkli/

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unlikely (comparative unlikelier or more unlikely, superlative unlikeliest or most unlikely)

1. Not likely; improbable; not to be reasonably expected.

   It is pretty unlikely that you'll win, but I will pray that at least you do well.

   In the highly unlikely event of landing in water, lifejackets are stored under the seat.

   • 1895 May 29, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter X, in The Time Machine: An Invention, London: William Heinemann, →OCLC:

     Now, I still think that for this box of matches to have escaped the wear of time for immemorial years was a strange, and for me, a most fortunate thing. Yet oddly enough I found here a far more unlikely substance, and that was camphor.

   • 1964 July, “Motive Power Miscellany: Western Region”, in Modern Railways, page 70:

     The Saturday evening Cardiff-West Wales mail train is still steam-worked, but a most unlikely locomotive used on May 23 was Stanier Class 5 4-6-0 No. 45250 (5A); it returned on May 25 with a train of steel billets.

   • 2025 February 1, Kevin Liptak, “With stiff tariffs he promised now in place, Trump opens a new trade war”, in CNN‎^[1]:

     Saturday’s tariffs are unlikely to be Trump’s last. The president said himself said in the Oval Office that additional tariffs could come by mid-February on chips, pharmaceuticals, steel, aluminum, copper, oil and gas imports – along with tariffs on the European Union – all threats that few would discount given his willingness to follow through on the North American and China tariffs on Saturday.

   • 2025 February 19, Mike Lewis, “Tragedy at Moorgate”, in RAIL, number 1029, page 59, about the Moorgate tube crash:

     Nor had the post mortem on Newson's body revealed any illness or other physical condition that might have prevented him from applying the brake, although after four days in the oven-like heat of the wreckage, the body was so badly decomposed as to make any reliable post mortem results unlikely.

2. Not holding out a prospect of success; likely to fail; unpromising.

   unlikely means

unlikely (comparative more unlikely, superlative most unlikely)

1. In an improbable manner.

unlikely (plural unlikelies)

1. Something or somebody considered .
   • 1980, Robert K. Lindsay, Applications of artificial intelligence for organic chemistry:

     The molecular ion candidates are divided by the testing phase into three categories: rejects, unlikelies, and probables. Differences between each candidate and the prominent peaks in the spectrum are computed.

   • 1996, Laurie R. King, To Play the Fool:

     "Here is my every possible phone number, plus a few unlikelies. And I've also put down the numbers of Karin and Wade, in case you've lost them. Karin can come anytime; Wade, up until six in the morning."

   • 2001, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Marci Shimoff, Chicken soup for the mother's soul 2, page 166:

     Then the most unlikely of unlikelies happened. We got another phone call. Another woman wanted to give us a baby—a boy, born just that morning. We walked into a hospital, and he was placed into my arms.

• “unlikely”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “unlikely”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.