Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Not known; unfamiliar.
- adjective Not identified, ascertained, or established.
- adjective Not well known or widely known.
- noun That which is unknown.
- noun Something that is not known.
- noun A person who is not well known, as to the general public.
- noun An unknown person, especially an Unknown Soldier.
- noun Mathematics A quantity of unknown numerical value.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Not known; not become an object of knowledge; not recognized, discovered, or found out.
- Unknown in this sense is often used in the predicate, followed by to: as, a man unknown to fame; a fact unknown to the public. In this use it is also often used absolntely: as, unknown to me (elliptically for it being unknown to me), he made a new contract.
- Not ascertained, with relation to extent, degree, quantity, or the like; hence, incalculable; inexpressible; immense.
- Not to be made known, expressed, or communicated.
- Not having had sexual commerce.
- noun One who or that which is unknown.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Not known; not apprehended.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Not
known ;unidentified ; not well known. - noun algebra A
variable (usually x, y or z) whose value is to be found. - noun Any fact or place about which nothing is known (as in the phrase "into the unknown").
- noun A person of no
identity ; anonentity
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective not famous or acclaimed
- adjective not known before
- noun an unknown and unexplored region
- noun a variable whose values are solutions of an equation
- adjective not known to exist
- adjective not known
- adjective being or having an unknown or unnamed source
- noun anyone who does not belong in the environment in which they are found
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Bailly defines it as 'the worship of the unknown, piety, godliness, humility, before the _unknown_.'
An Apology for Atheism Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination by One of Its Apostles Charles Southwell
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The boy solves his problem in algebra, finding out the unknown quantity by those values which are given him; and can we not also infer something of the _unknown_ from the great panorama that passes unceasingly before us?
The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne Frank Preston Stearns 1881
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The character is modeled on Florence Birdseye, but Colley changed her name unknown reasons.
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The character is modeled on Florence Birdseye, but Colley changed her name unknown reasons.
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Mr Rumsfeld is the man who, in February 2002, used the phrase "unknown unknowns" to describe the main dangers in any possible confrontation with Iraq.
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If he is a democrat, he is one in some weird sense of the term unknown to most of us.
Bloggers.Pakistan 2008
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Fear of the unknown is an emotion that few artists throw themselves into, but every human being experiences at one time or another.
Archive 2010-02-01 2010
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Fear of the unknown is the only villain, and we see remarkably little of that.
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This unknown is the new Arco Norte which has been open about 2 months.
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Fear of the unknown is the most potent kind of fear, folks; and this was a large unknown space on the map for Democrats.
NRSC dropped money into Brown race… *quietly.* - Moe_Lane’s blog - RedState 2010
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Diagnosis of an early pregnancy failure is often straightforward when ultrasound definitively identifies an intrauterine or extrauterine pregnancy.1-3 However, ultrasound does not definitively identify pregnancy location in up to 40% of women presenting for evaluation. This transient state is termed a pregnancy of unknown location.4 During surveillance, up to one-third of women will have serial human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) concentrations in a pattern suggesting neither an ongoing viable gestation nor a spontaneously resolving pregnancy loss; this scenario is termed a persisting pregnancy of unknown location. These women are at high risk of an ectopic pregnancy.
bilby commented on the word unknown
"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."
- Donald Rumsfeld.
July 24, 2009
skipvia commented on the word unknown
I think the opening lines of this song say it all.
July 24, 2009
PossibleUnderscore commented on the word unknown
I think that we whould leave some known unknowns as they are (mostly concerning space).
Also, are there things that we don't know we know? Is it possible?
July 24, 2009