ppl. a. [UN-1 8.]
1. Not instructed or grounded in something.
1634. Milton, Comus, 367. I do not think my sister so to seek, Or so unprincipl’d in vertues book. Ibid. (1644), Educ., 3. Others betake them to State affairs, with souls so unprincipl’d in vertue, and true generous breeding, that [etc.].
2. Of persons, etc.: Not possessed of fixed, sound, or honorable principles of conduct.
1644. Milton, Judgm. Bucer, 26. God … will also give them … to inform themselvs rightly in the midst of an unprincipl’d age.
1681. Flavel, Meth. Grace, v. 102. An unprincipled professor must be squeezed by some weight of a affliction, ere he will yield one tear.
1771. Goldsm., Hist. Eng., I. 353. Every office … was bestowed on these unprincipled strangers.
1796. Mme. D’Arblay, Camilla, V. 506. [It] opened to his unprincipled mind a scheme yet more flagitious.
1849. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., vi. II. 113. Several men not less unprincipled than Sunderland.
1898. E. Jenkins, Haverholme, 30. A couple of unprincipled rascals.
absol. 1834. Tait’s Mag., May, 222/2. These clamours of the wealthy, the timid, or the unprincipled.
3. Based upon, exhibiting, want of principle.
1782. V. Knox, Ess., cxx. (1819), II. 9. There are, indeed, many who are esteemed good sort of persons, but whose goodness is unprincipled.
1797. Burke, Regic. Peace, ii. ¶ 22. Whilst the monarchies subsisted, this unprincipled cession was what the influence of the elder branch … never dared to attempt on the younger.
1841. Thackeray, Gt. Hoggarty Diam., vii. I thought this rather cruel and unprincipled conduct.
1871. Freeman, Hist. Ess., Ser. I. xi. 331. The ambition of Philip the Good was quite as unprincipled as that of his son.
Hence Unprincipledness.
a. 1812. Buckminster, Serm. (1827), 362. Their strange union … of exquisite sensibility and practical unprincipledness.
1865. Pall Mall G., 12 Dec., 2. A settled unprincipledness has been eating its way into the public opinion of Europe.
