Citations:don't know

English citations of don't know

Someone who responds "don't know" to a survey question

• 1965, Louis Schultz Reed, The Extent of Health Insurance in the United States, page 28:

  If all the don't knows are assumed to have other plan coverage, then the total other plan enrollment becomes 78,961,000.

• 1999, Jack C. Doppelt, Ellen Shearer, Nonvoters: America's No-Shows, page 37:

  Perez never has voted, a common trait of the Don't Knows we interviewed and those interviewed by the Medill reporters.

• 2002, Adam Brown, Fanatics: Power, Identity and Fandom in Football:

  A large number of Aberdeen fans were 'don't knows' with the rest split evenly between supporters of the status quo and of a united Ireland.

• 2012, A. Visalberghi, Education and Division of Labour, page 38:

  It should be noted that three quarters of the “don't knows” are experts from the EEC countries where the tradition of hierarchical differentiation and sharp discrimination between general (humanistic) education and technical/vocational training is more deeply rooted, and that the "don't knows" and the "noes" consist mainly of experts in vocational training, sociology and school administration.

• 2013, Phil Henry, Adaptation and Developments in Western Buddhism:

  The remaining 27 per cent of the sample could be called the 'don't knows' as they clearly had no knowledge of the term.

• 2014, John Crace, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden:

  The expert pollsters insisted referenda were very different animals to general elections and that the 'Don't Knows invariably voted in favour of the status quo, so there was nothing much to worry about.'

• 2015, Mindful, page 196:

  The problem was the majority of these people were shifting to being “don't knows” rather than actually changing allegiances.

An uncertainty; something that one is uncertain about

• 2009, Adam Williams, The Emperor's Bones:

  He publicly boasts of his three 'don't knows' – how much money he has in his coffers, how many soldiers he has in his army, how many women he has in his harem.

• 2010, James Klotzle, God in Our Stress: The Christian's Guide to Stress Management:

  We don't know what to say when our best friend is hurting. We don't know what our new mother-in-law will think about our cooking abilities. Our lives are full of don't-knows!

• 2012, Iyanla Vanzant, In The Meantime: Finding Yourself And The Love You Want:

  You don't know why, but I can tell you that the meantime is fraught with don't knows and can't do's.

• 2014, Alexander Maskill, The Hive Construct, page 45:

  ' […] It looks like it doesn't destroy all the bio-augs that get exposed to it, but we can't find criteria for those whose bio-augs malfunction and those whose don'e except that there's about a one-in-five chance of it taking all the tech in your body.' That was a lot of don't knows, Zala thought to herself.

• 2017, Laura Walker, Helping Children to Learn About Safer Sexual Behaviour, page 43:

  I've come across a few different “don't knows”. What sort of “don't know” is yours?