a. [UN-1 7.]
† 1. Of sounds or words: Expressing or conveying no idea. Obs.
1751. Johnson, Rambler, No. 184, ¶ 12. However we amuse ourselves with unideal sounds.
1792. W. Roberts, Looker-On, No. 23 (1794), I. 324. A language … rich in the unideal terms of a raving philosophy.
† 2. Destitute of, lacking in, ideas. Obs.
1751. Johnson, Rambler, No. 135, ¶ 9. A short relief from the tediousness of unideal vacancy.
1801. Phil. Trans., XCI. 91. Un-ideal operations conducted without principle, purpose, or regularity.
3. Having or following no ideal.
1760. D. Webb, Inq. Beauties of Painting, iv. 68. Those servile and unideal painters, who think they have attained every perfection, if they keep within the rules of drawing.
1856. Emerson, Eng. Traits, Lit., Wks. (Bohn), II. 113. The scholars have become un-ideal. They parry earnest speech with banter and levity.
1867. F. Harrison, Choice of Bks. (1886), 110. To be fierce is to be unideal, to be unideal is to be sanguinary.
4. Not marked by idealism; having no ideal character or features, etc.
1846. Ruskin, Mod. Paint., II. III. xiii. § 2. Unideal works of art … represent actual existing things.
1873. Spencer, Stud. Sociol., ix. (1877), 222. Instead of our practice being unideal, the ideas which guide it verge on the romantic.
1877. L. Morris, Epic Hades, III. 276. The bare And unideal aspect of the fields Which Spring not yet had kissed.
