Something inelegant is not graceful or attractive. An inelegant dress, an inelegant way of sitting, an inelegant sentence. It does not have to be ugly; it can just be awkward, heavy, or lacking polish. In science and computing the word has a special flavour: an inelegant proof or an inelegant bit of code still works, but it is messy or roundabout — the tidy dictionary sense “not pretty” is tidier than how specialists talk. It is not a swear word. It is a cool, slightly snobbish complaint, more at home in careful writing than in chat. Younger everyday talk is more likely to say ugly, awkward, or just “not elegant.”