unpromising

an unpromising beginning to the relationship.

the boy's natural intellect had survived in unpromising circumstances.

Muck divers explore apparently unpromising sand flats and muddy silts devoid of visible inhabitants.

Yet, despite this unpromising start, the boy Yuri seems to have been relatively content.

Under these unpromising auspices, the parting took place, and the journey began.

Dick, meanwhile, turned to Mr. Bloeckman, determined to extract what gold he could from this unpromising load.

In spite of Eustacia's apparent willingness to wait through the period of an unpromising engagement, till he should be established in his new pursuit.

To diminish the number of those who are capable of paying it, is surely a most unpromising expedient for encouraging the cultivation of corn.

From the unpromising material of natural history, long seen as the Cinderella of biological science, they fashioned an ideology as powerful and transformative as any philosophy or religion before it.

It was an unpromising storefront—a grubby 1970s exterior that promised a " Vintage Clothes Emporium, all decades, all styles, low prices." But I walked in and stopped in my tracks.

And I happen to see this really tiny study which had the unpromising name, sub-lethal behavior and physiological effects of the biomedical bleeding process on the American horseshoe crab, Limulus Polyphemus.

He is also a risk-taker: at Roche he bet big on three costly trials of drugs to treat Alzheimer's disease, breast cancer and lung cancer, despite unpromising results in early clinical studies.