1. a. Not in accordance with the rules of grammar.
1654. Jer. Taylor, Real Pres., § 5. 88. [To] expound it in a sense which suffers a violence and a most unnatural, ungrammatical torture.
1679. Dryden, Troil. & Cress., Pref. ¶ 1. Of those [words] which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse.
1749. Chesterf., Lett., 5 Dec. His diction was not only inelegant, but frequently ungrammatical, always vulgar.
1821. Lamb, Elia, I. Mrs. Battle on Whist. She called it an ungrammatical game.
1848. Thackeray, Van. Fair, xxxii. French … of a very ungrammatical sort.
1883. Law Rep., 11 Q. B. Div. 614. A defining section, confused and ungrammatical.
b. Not observing the rules of grammar.
1859. Habits of Gd. Society, iii. 155. I am wondering whether everybody arranges his wardrobe as our ungrammatical nurses used to do ours.
1871. Earle, Philol. Eng. Tongue, 412. But people whose education had been neglected were apt to make a plural in their own way by just adding an a little vauge e to the singular this, and so they (the ungrammatical people) made a plural this-e.
2. At variance with correct rule or method.
1851. Ruskin, Mod. Paint., I. II. II. ii. § 12. Some really ungrammatical and false picture of the old masters.
1903. G. Baldwin Brown, Arts Early Eng., II. viii. 327. Finally the Saxon designer is beyond question a man of some initiative, a seeker, or perhaps only a groper, after architectural effect, and work like the enrichment of the wall surfaces at Earls Barton and Bradford-on-Avon, or on the nave at Geddington, is carefully schemed though in parts quite ungrammatical.
Hence Ungrammaticalness.
1698. Christ Exalted, § xi. 9. Omitting several Blunders of Ungrammaticalness.
1803. Gentl. Mag., LXXIII. I. 145. To vindicate the dialect of London … from the imputation of vulgarisms and ungrammaticalness.
