Unloved means nobody loves this person or thing. Used of people, it is one of the sadder words in English — an unloved child, someone who died unloved and alone. It describes not what the person does but what they do not receive, and that is exactly why it hurts: it is a lack, and the person is not to blame for it. It appears constantly in psychology and in ordinary emotional talk — 'she grew up feeling unloved' — and that phrase 'feel unloved' is probably the most common way you will meet it, because the word so often describes a feeling rather than a proven fact. Used of things, it is much lighter, sometimes even funny: an unloved old sofa, an unloved corner of the garden, an unloved government policy. Here it means neglected, unpopular, ignored — nobody cares for it, nobody wants it. Journalists like it for this: 'the party's unloved leader'. It sits both before a noun and after a linking verb, so both 'an unloved child' and 'he felt unloved' are normal.