- 1
Looking, at the start, like it will not turn out well. The key is that this is a judgement made EARLY — about a beginning, a first sign, a young person's first attempt — and it is always about how things LOOK, not how they end. That is why the word so often appears in stories where the ending is the opposite: "an unpromising start", "unpromising beginnings", "an unpromising piece of land". English speakers love this word precisely because it sets up a surprise. Common companions: weather ("the sky looked unpromising"), a business plan, a football season, a student's first essay, a place that looks dull from outside. It is a quiet, slightly formal word — gentler and more polite than "bad" or "hopeless", because it only says how something appears now and leaves the door open. Writers and journalists use it far more than people do in conversation.
看起來不太有希望的；前景不看好的
組成un- (not) + promising (looking likely to succeed). promising comes from promise — and the picture inside the word is exactly right: something promising seems to be making you a promise about its future. unpromising is a thing that makes you no such promise.
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
unpromisingadj
- 1
Not promising.
- The main reason for Mr Bush’s enduring popularity is a health initiative he personally championed with the unpromising acronym of Pepfar.
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。