unread

English

Etymology

un- +‎ read

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈʌn.ɹɛd/ (adjective and noun)

• Audio (US)

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  (adjective and noun)
• Rhymes: -ɛd (adjective and noun)
• IPA^(key): /ˈʌn.ɹiːd/ (verb)
• Rhymes: -iːd (verb)

Adjective

unread (not comparable)

1. 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 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC:

     ‘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.

2. Not having read; uneducated.
   • c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii]:

     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,^[2]

     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,^[3]

     […] only those unread in the biography of genius imagine themselves to be original.

Translations

not having been read

• Bulgarian: непрочетен (nepročeten)
• Dutch: ongelezen (nl)
• Hungarian: olvasatlan (hu)
• Japanese: 未読 (ja) (みどく, midoku)
• Latin: illectus
• Polish: nieprzeczytany m
• Swedish: oläst (sv)

uneducated

• Bulgarian: необразован (bg) (neobrazovan)
• Romanian: necitit
• Swedish: obeläst (sv)

Verb

unread (third-person singular simple present unreads, present participle unreading, simple past and past participle unread)

1. (transitive) To undo the process of reading.

   That book was terrible! I wish I could unread it.

2. (computing, transitive) To flag (a previously read e-mail or similar message) as not having been read.

Noun

unread (plural unreads)

1. (computing) An unread email or instant message.
   • 2011, Hugh D. Culver, Give Me a Break: The Art of Making Time Work for You, page 129:

     You will have fewer 'Unreads' staring at you from your Inbox, and will feel—and be—more productive.

   • 2022, Michelle McCraw, Boss Me:

     I flipped from the calendar app to the email app and logged in to view Cooper's. The unreads were staggering; I'd have to triage them later.

Anagrams

• Renaud, Urenda, dauner, endura, neurad, undear