onwaarskynlik

Onwaarskynlik is a Dutch adverb that means "unlikely" or "improbable." The word is formed from the negative prefix on‑, derived from the Germanic "on" meaning "not," combined with the word waarskynlik, which itself originates from the Middle Dutch waarskynlyk, meaning "likely." Waarskynlyk comes from the root word waarskyn, referring to "weather" or more precisely "fate" or "event," and the suffix ­lik, which forms adjectives and adverbs indicating manner or possibility.

In contemporary Dutch usage, onwaarskynlik is employed to describe events, outcomes, or hypotheses that have a low probability of occurring. In written and spoken language it is an everyday term, frequently encountered in news reports, scientific writing, and everyday conversation. Its usage is more formal than the colloquial “niet zo waarschijnlijk.” For example: “Het is onwaarskynlijk dat er vandaag nog wordt geregen,” translates to “It is unlikely that it will rain today.”

The adjective form of onwaarskynlik is onwaarschijnlijke, meaning "unlikely" in the sense of a descriptive attribute. In compound words, the element is sometimes written without a hyphen: “onwaarskynlikheid” denotes "unlikelihood" or "improbability," while “onwaarschijnlijke gebeurtenis” refers to an improbable event.

Synonyms in Dutch include “niet zo waarschijnlijk,” “waarschijnlijk weinig,” and “zeldzaam.” However, onwaarskynlik carries a stronger connotation of improbability than these milder expressions.

Onwaarskynlik shares its root with several other Germanic languages. In German, the analogous word is unwahrscheinlich; in English, the cognate is unlikely. The shared etymology illustrates the common Indo‑European ancestry of the Germanic language family, where the concept of probability and likelihood was encoded in similar morphological constructions.

In lexical databases, onwaarskynlik is indexed as an adverb of the Dutch language with the sense number 1: “not likely to happen; improbable.” It is used in both spoken and written contexts and is considered standard Dutch.