unknownly

English[edit]

unknownly (not comparable)

(dated, rare) Mysteriously, without a known reason or cause.
- 1646, Francis Quarles, The Shepheards Oracles: Delivered in Certain Eglogues‎^[1], page 64:
  Just then it open’d; and th’enclosed Grain / Unknownly vanisht; and then clos’d again
(rare) Obscurely, without being known or noticed.
- 1960, J.B. Leishman, Selected Works‎^[2], translation of original by Rainer Maria Rilke, page 122:
  Attentively the grey horse wended / (by many a mighty fist forfended) / through men that lay unknownly dying, / and trod on shallow blackened grass.
(uncommon) Alternative form of unknowingly, without knowledge; without intent.
- 1848, Charles Richard Weld, “1665–1670”, in A History of the Royal Society, With Memoirs of the Presidents‎^[3], page 209:
  if any thing of that nature be brought in, and desired to be lodged with the Society [...] they should be obliged to shew it first to the President (for fear of lodging unknownly ballads and buffooneries in these scoffing times), and that then it should be sealed up
- 1971, Lambert LaVoy, Bay settlement of Monroe County, Michigan‎^[4], page 88:
  In 1826 it was discovered that the log church and the dwellings on the north side of the creek had unknownly been built on lands set aside by an act of Congress for school purposes, the subsequent rent or sale of which would largely make up the school fund for the Territory.