Unsympathetic means not feeling or showing concern for someone else's problems or suffering. When you're unsympathetic, you don't share in another person's troubles or offer them understanding and support.

Imagine a classmate drops their lunch tray in the cafeteria, and instead of helping or feeling bad for them, someone laughs or says, “That's your problem.” That's being unsympathetic. An unsympathetic teacher might dismiss a student's genuine struggles with homework without trying to understand what's making it difficult.

The word can also describe a character in a story who's hard to like or root for. An unsympathetic character might be selfish, mean, or cruel in ways that make readers hope they don't succeed. In A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge starts as a deeply unsympathetic character: he's cold, greedy, and dismissive of others' hardships.

Sometimes we use unsympathetic to describe situations or environments that seem harsh or unforgiving. An unsympathetic winter storm doesn't care about your travel plans. The desert is an unsympathetic landscape if you're unprepared.

Being unsympathetic is different from being unable to help. You might not be able to fix your friend's problem, but you can still be sympathetic by listening and caring. Unsympathetic means you don't even try to understand or care about what they're going through.