unsavory

in a sentence

To avoid being rolled by the unsavory characters who rule the streets and freeway overpasses where he slept, he learned to bury what money he had before entering a city, then recover it on the way out of town.  (source) Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild, 1996

He wasn't merely an unsavory drunken brute, but an unsavory, clever drunken brute.  (source) Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning, 1999

...he would sell this information to certain unsavory individuals.  (source) Frank Beddor, The Looking Glass Wars, 2006

I didn't tell the whole story, since I knew I had to choose my words carefully: During Mom's domestic violence case a couple of years earlier, Lindsay and I had let slip some unsavory details about Mom's parenting, and because it counted as a new revelation of abuse, the family counselor was required to report it to child services.†  (source) J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy, 2016

The men were furious at having been tricked into behaving politely to this insignificant fellow with the unsavoury reputation and the heretical opinions.  (source) Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932

That task fell to an inner circle of friends who took it upon themselves to weed out unsavory hangers-on, with or without Joe's knowledge.†  (source) John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, 1994

Doomed by his own choice, therefore, as Mr. Dimmesdale so evidently was, to eat his unsavoury morsel always at another's board, and endure the life-long chill which must be his lot who seeks to warm himself only at another's fireside, it truly seemed that this sagacious, experienced, benevolent old physician, with his concord of paternal and reverential love for the young pastor, was the very man, of all mankind, to be constantly within reach of his voice.  (source) Nathanial Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, 1850

A good dozen swords had responded to the Stark woman's plea for help: the Harrenhal man, the three Brackens, a pair of unsavory sellswords who looked as though they'd kill him as soon as spit, and some fool field hands who doubtless had no idea what they were doing.†  (source) George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones, 1996

There they found the great man, who by the way suffers from a somewhat unsavoury reputation, lying in the library with the back of his head cracked open like an eggshell.†  (source) Agatha Christie, Early Cases Of Hercule Poirot, 1935

And as you know, a certain senator was just revealed to be involved in some very unsavory business.†  (source) Dave Eggers, The Circle, 2013

So, the actual conditions of living in the Bottoms, that was so well built and that looked so nice, were quite unsavoury because people must live in the kitchen, and the kitchens opened on to that nasty alley of ash-pits.†  (source) D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, 1913

They brought something out in me that was unsavory.†  (source) Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl, 2012

He was evidently quite contented, and awaited evens with perfect calm; he even seemed to enjoy Brogard's unsavoury fare.†  (source) Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1905