unread
English
Etymology 1
Pronunciation
Adjective
unread (not comparable)
- Not having been read.
- 1700, Charles Hopkins, The Art of Love, (after Ovid’s Ars Amatoria), London: Joseph Wild, “The Muse,” p. 36,[1]
- At first, perhaps, unread your Note’s return’d,
- Your Person slighted, and your Passion scorn’d.
- 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green & Co., “Remarkable Incident of Doctor Lanyon,” pp. 59-60,[2]
- ‘PRIVATE: for the hands of J. G. Utterson ALONE and in case of his predecease to be destroyed unread,’ so it was emphatically superscribed; and the lawyer dreaded to behold the contents.
- The book I got for my 18th birthday remained unread until my retirement.
- 1700, Charles Hopkins, The Art of Love, (after Ovid’s Ars Amatoria), London: Joseph Wild, “The Muse,” p. 36,[1]
- Not having read; uneducated.
- c. 1601, William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act I, Scene 3,[3]
- In fortune’s love […] the bold and coward,
- The wise and fool, the artist and unread,
- The hard and soft seem all affined and kin:
- But, in the wind and tempest of her frown,
- Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,
- Puffing at all, winnows the light away;
- 1796, Elizabeth Inchbald, Nature and Art, Dublin: P. Wogan et al., Chapter 22, p. 111,[4]
- The only child of two doating parents, she never had been taught the necessity of resignation—untutored, unread, unused to reflect, but knowing how to feel […]
- 1890, Frances Willard, Address before the Seventeenth Convention of the World Woman’s Christian Temperance Union at Atlanta, Georgia, in William Jennings Bryan (editor), The World’s Famous Orations, New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1906, Volume 10, p. 162,[5]
- […] only those unread in the biography of genius imagine themselves to be original.
- c. 1601, William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act I, Scene 3,[3]
Translations
not having been read
|
uneducated
|
Verb
unread (third-person singular simple present unreads, present participle unreading, simple past and past participle unread)
- (transitive) To undo the process of reading.
- That book was terrible! I wish I could unread it.
- (computing, transitive) To flag (a previously read e-mail or similar message) as not having been read.
Etymology 2
From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Middle English unred, unræd, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Old English unrǣd (“folly, foolish plan; crime, mischief, injury, plot, treachery”), equivalent to un- + rede.
Noun
unread (uncountable)
Anagrams
Categories:
- English terms prefixed with un-
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- Rhymes:English/ɛd
- English lemmas
- English adjectives
- English uncomparable adjectives
- English verbs
- English transitive verbs
- en:Computing
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Old English
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English terms with archaic senses