unprincipledadj.n.

1637 J. Milton Comus 13 I doe not thinke my sister so to seeke Or so unprincipl'd in vertues book.

1644 J. Milton Of Educ. 3 Others betake them to State affairs, with souls so unprincipl'd in vertue, and true generous breeding, that [etc.].

1744 W. Havard Regulus v. v. 63 Who shall take care to form their ductile Minds, (Unprincipled as yet in Virtue's School).

1766 J. Burton Serm. Publick Occas. 289* The generality of people are..found to be unprincipled in the grounds of Religion.

1644 J. Milton tr. M. Bucer Ivdgem. conc. Divorce 26 God..will also give them..to inform themselvs rightly in the midst of an unprincipl'd age.

1681 J. Flavell Method of Grace v. 102 An unprincipled professor must be squeez'd by some weight of affliction, ere he will yield one tear.

1771 O. Goldsmith Hist. Eng. I. 353 Every office..was bestowed on these unprincipled strangers.

1796 F. Burney Camilla V. x. xiii. 506 This..opened to his unprincipled mind a scheme yet more flagitious.

1841 W. M. Thackeray Great Hoggarty Diamond vii I thought this rather cruel and unprincipled conduct.

1864 National Rev. Apr. 434 The ambition of Philip the Good was quite as unprincipled as that of his son.

1878 E. Jenkins Haverholme 30 A couple of unprincipled rascals.

1923 N.Y. World 14 June 12/1 It is to be hoped that foreign powers will not be weak enough to consent to such unprincipled horse-trade.

1977 Listener 20 Oct. 515 Furnivall comes out of it badly (vain, unprincipled,..opportunistic, unscholarly—though no one contributed more quotations for the dictionary).

2003 P. Todd & J. Bloch Global Issues i. 32 The Cold War provided a legitimising framework for the unprincipled and frequently counterproductive waging of covert warfare.

1700 J. Sergeant Transnatural Philos. iii. 67 Dishevell'd, Ill-knit and Unprincipled Discourses..have not the least Semblance of Concluding evidently..any one Truth.

1783 V. Knox Ess. (new ed.) II. cxx. 149 There are, indeed, many who are esteemed good sort of persons, but whose goodness is unprincipled.

1838 T. Maguire in Authenticated Rep. Discuss. Rev. T. Maguire & Rev. T. D. Gregg (1840) 226 What need we wonder..at the promulgation of such unprincipled doctrines..when I tell you that Protestantism is without principles; they have not a single principle—a single sacrament.

1971 E. L. Doctorow Bk. of Daniel (1991) i. 6 All her instinctive unprincipled beliefs rise to the surface and her knees lock together.

2007 W. Chen Inspiration from Confucius: Choice Quotations (rev. ed.) Foreword Confucius does not advocate an unprincipled love.

1787 J. Whitaker Mary Queen of Scots Vindicated I. i. 12 It fermented into such disorders..as the unthinking and the unprincipled are always ready to place to the discredit of religion itself.

1812 Spirit of Public Jrnls. (1813) 16 360 Pledges shall have been mutualized, and those solemn assurances reciprocated, which..can only be violated by the unprincipled.

1834 Tait's Edinb. Mag. May 222/2 These clamours of the wealthy, the timid, or the unprincipled.

1906 S. Baring-Gould Bk. of Rhine vi. 96 The greedy, the selfish, the ambitious, the unprincipled were on the side of the Pope.

1950 Rotarian Feb. 11/1 No one can deny that the public has a fundamental right to protection against the unprincipled.

2006 A. Brent tr. St. Cyprian On Church 172 The unprincipled would make any attempt by their human will to destroy God's officially appointed order.

1792 European Mag. Nov. 338/1 Many persons have supposed that the Oxford Editors garbled Lord Clarendon's History in many parts, and that they left out what he had said of General Monk's unprincipledness.

a1812 J. S. Buckminster Serm. (1827) 362 Their strange union..of exquisite sensibility and practical unprincipledness.

1865 Pall Mall Gaz. 12 Dec. 2 A settled unprincipledness has been eating its way into the public opinion of Europe.

1941 Amer. Polit. Sci. Rev. 35 1091 Branding tolerance as unprincipledness and equality as the rule of mediocrity.

2000 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 22 Jan. b11/1 Even Mr. Fish's principled unprincipledness might have to give way now and then to the villainy of fairness and reason.