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Unwitting   /ənwˈɪtɪŋ/   Listen
Unwitting

adjective
1.
Not done with purpose or intent.  Synonyms: unintentional, unplanned.  "An unintentional pun" , "The offense was unintentional" , "An unwitting mistake may be overlooked"
2.
Not aware or knowing.
3.
Unaware because of a lack of relevant information or knowledge.  Synonyms: ignorant, unknowing, unknowledgeable.  "An unknowledgeable assistant" , "His rudeness was unwitting"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Unwitting" Quotes from Famous Books



... and ptarmigan whitens, too. It is the coming of stern winter. Wandering Dog-Rib, Slavi, and Loucheux, lone trapper, the people of each isolated fur-post, must alike take warning. God pity man or beast who enters the six months of a Mackenzie winter unfortified by caches of food or unwitting of shelter. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... honest dollar by smuggling in tobacco for the convicts. On that night, returning from a trip to San Francisco, he brought in with him fifteen pounds of prime cigarette tobacco. He had done this before, and delivered the stuff to Cecil Winwood. So, on that particular night, he, all unwitting, turned the stuff over to Winwood in the bakery. It was a big, solid, paper-wrapped bundle of innocent tobacco. The stool baker, from concealment, saw the package delivered to Winwood and so reported to the Captain of the Yard ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... little mind, he was telling himself—fearful in its latter day casting aside of all such small matters as taste and feeling. People stripped the garments from things in these days. He laughed inwardly at himself and his unwitting "these days." Senile severity mouthed just such phrases. Were they not his own days and the outcome of a past which had considered itself so much more decorous? Had not boldly questionable attitudes been held in those other days? How long was it since ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... unwitting that he did so or that I saw, he laughed aloud, mockingly and defiantly, at the advancing storm. I see him yet standing there like a pigmy out of the Arabian Nights before the huge front of some malignant genie. He was daring ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... serve And ne'er can stand enrolled as Creon's man. Thus then I answer: since thou hast not spared To twit me with my blindness—thou hast eyes, Yet see'st not in what misery thou art fallen, Nor where thou dwellest nor with whom for mate. Dost know thy lineage? Nay, thou know'st it not, And all unwitting art a double foe To thine own kin, the living and the dead; Aye and the dogging curse of mother and sire One day shall drive thee, like a two-edged sword, Beyond our borders, and the eyes that now See clear shall henceforward endless night. Ah whither shall ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... is not lavished upon those unwitting mortals who do them harm alone. If one chances to succeed in a task set by the immortals of the forest, one is in danger of death, as the following ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... we feel that Marlowe and Hugo themselves—not the imaginary Tamburlaine and Hernani—are chanting the desires of their own hearts. Arnold's "Sohrab and Rustum," after finishing its tragic story of the son slain by the unwitting father, closes with a lyric description of the majestic Oxus stream flowing on to the Aral sea. Objective as it all seems, this close is intensely personal, permeated with the same tender stoicism which colors Arnold's "Dover Beach" and "A Summer Night." The device of using a Nature ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... the early part of his missionary life, tells us that in a village the family room was given up to him for the night, and in the morning he found a little son had been born in the stable. He supposed that he had been the unwitting cause of such an event occurring there; but longer acquaintance with the people shows that woman almost invariably resorts to that place in her hour of sorrow, and there she often dies. The number who meet death in this ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... the mental eye of a suddenly perturbed constituency. The realization flashed through every mind that if the women of Tinkletown stuck solidly together, there wasn't the ghost of a chance for the sex that had been in the saddle since the world began. An unwitting, or perhaps a designing, Providence had populated Tinkletown with at least twenty more women ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... absurd charges with haughty disdain, he soon perceived that the danger was growing serious and that it was necessary for him to hasten his return to Rome, where a trial was now inevitable. One of Germanicus's friends had accused him; Agrippina, an unwitting tool in the hands of the emperor's enemies, every day stirred public opinion to still higher pitches of excitement through her grief and her laments; the party of Germanicus worked upon the senate and the people, and when Piso arrived at Rome he found ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... speechless love the secret grace That binds it round with silence, and engirds Its heart with memories fair as heaven's own face, Let love take courage for a little space To speak and be rebuked not of the soul, Whose utterance, ere the unwitting speech be whole, Rebukes itself, and ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... spirit, which arise from the combination of the three primary emotions, to wit, desire, pleasure, and pain. It is evident from what I have said, that we are in many ways driven about by external causes, and that like waves of the sea driven by contrary winds we toss to and fro unwitting of the issue and of our fate. But I have said, that I have only set forth the chief conflicting emotions, not all that might be given. For, by proceeding in the same way as above, we can easily show that love is united to repentance, scorn, shame, &c. I think everyone will agree ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... sitting at a great Banquet of Men, Sitting with honored leaders of the blind, unwitting Multitude; I saw him there with the writers, editors, painters, men of letters, Legislators and judges, the Leaders of the People, Leaders flushed with the wines of price, eating costly and rare foods, Making loud talk, and boastful, of that marvel, American Liberty! Thinking were they ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... his shade thy floor still darken? dost thou still, despairing, hearken To that deep sepulchral utterance like the oracles of yore? In the same place is he sitting? Does he give no sign of quitting? Is he conscious or unwitting when he answers "Nevermore?" Tell ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... say with awe, deign to bless me by correcting the unwitting faults which, seen and heard by you, I have committed, by blowing off and clearing away the calamities which evil gods might inflict, by causing me to live long like the hard and lasting rock, and by repeating to the gods of heavenly origin and to ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... Over-weighted, and underpaid, This human tool of exploiting Trade, Though tougher than leather, tenser than steel. Fails at last, for his senses reel, His nerves collapse, and, with sleep-sealed eyes, Prone and helpless a log he lies! A hundred hearts beat placidly on, Unwitting they that their warder's gone; A hundred lips are babbling blithe, Some seconds hence they in pain may writhe. For the pace is hot, and the points are near, And Sleep hath deadened the driver's ear; And signals flash through the night in vain. Death is in charge ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various

... all unwitting; she intended to rally him sweetly. But seventeen is deathly serious at such junctures, and William was in a sensitive condition. He made no reply in words. Instead, he drew himself up (from the waist, that is, because he was sitting) with a kind of proud ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... be equally apprehensive of unintended suggestions caused by an unfortunate closeness of unrelated ideas. This fault was illustrated in a story by an Iowa reporter who wrote that "Lon Stegle took Mrs. Humphrey and a load of hogs to Santo Monday," and of an unwitting Pennsylvania humorist who said, "Audry Richardson, while visiting his sweetheart in Freedonia last Sunday sprained his arm severely and won't be able to use it for ten days or two weeks." If the tone of the story is meant to be dignified, unintended ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... two kings were to join in raising the young children to the throne. The two kings then sent a message to the queen, who at that time dwelt in the same city, saying, 'Send thou the children to us, that we may place them on the throne.' Clotilde, full of joy, and unwitting of their craft, set meat and drink before the children, and then sent them away, saying, 'I shall seem not to have lost my son if I see ye succeed him in his kingdom.' The young princes were immediately seized, and parted from their servants ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... had led her to assume positively, on inadequate grounds, that her union with George Cannon had been fruitless. She must suffer, and he also must suffer. Rather than let him know, in any conceivable manner, that, all unwitting, she was bearing the child of another at the moment of her betrothal to himself, she preferred to be regarded as a jilt of the very worst kind. Strange that she should choose the role of deceiver instead of the role of victim! Strange ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... the curtain over him, and thus, hidden as if of set purpose, fell asleep. As he slept Ghismonda, who, as it happened, had caused Guiscardo to come that day, left her damsels in the garden, softly entered the room, and having locked herself in, unwitting that there was another in the room, opened the door to Guiscardo, who was in waiting. Straightway they got them to bed, as was their wont; and, while they there solaced and disported them together, it so befell that Tancred awoke, and heard and saw what they did: ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... the Amph. is unique, for she is drawn with absolute sincerity and speaks nothing out of character. Certainly no parody can be made out of the nobly spoken lines 633-52, which lend a genuine air of tragedy to the professed tragi(co)comoedia (59, 63); unless we think of the lady's unwitting compromising condition (surely too subtle a thought for the original audience). Note also the exalted tone of 831-4, 839-42. But all through this scene Sosia is prancing around, prating nonsense, and playing the buffoon, so that perchance even here ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke

... her discovery before Doctor Sherman. She was certain that with her new-found knowledge, and with her entirely new point of view, they could quickly discover wherein he had been duped—for she still held him to be an unwitting tool—and thus quickly clear up the whole case. But for reasons already known she failed to find him; and learning that he had gone away with Blake, she well knew Blake would keep him out of her reach ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... accompanied their earliest miseries. It was in learning Hook's exercises, or primers, or whatever they were called, that they first had their fingers slapped over the piano-forte. The father of Theodore, no doubt, was the unwitting cause of much unhappiness to many a young lady in her teens. Hook pere was an organist at Norwich. He came up to town, and was engaged at Marylebone Gardens and at Vauxhall; so that Theodore had no ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... not our intention in these words to cast doubt on the immortality of the soul, or to depreciate the value of a belief in it. We desire to vindicate morality and religion from the unwitting attacks made on them by many self styled Christian writers in their exaggeration of the practical importance of such a faith. The qualitative contents of human nature have nothing to do with its quantitative contents: ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... there's James Carter, King's Son; Glory! there's Mary Carter, King's Son. Hallelujah!" How far he would have pursued the list of family names we don't know, had not the whole meeting burst into laughter and tears at Abe's unwitting mistake in calling Mary Carter a King's Son; but it was of no consequence to him; a little slip of his happy tongue didn't mar his meaning; the people cheered him, and on he went as ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell

... matches,' quickly and deftly metamorphosed to escape the unobservant or untrained eye, but the same, notwithstanding. And now my interest grew apace. I knew that at last we were in the presence of that powerful official who dispensed virgin two-dollar notes to the unwitting foreigner or native; and Adam Camp was ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... government, fitted out a fleet of privateers, and after strengthening themselves by successful depredations, ventured upon the bold exploit of seizing the town of Brielle. Thus Alva by his cruelty became the unwitting instrument of the future independence of the seven Dutch provinces. The fleet of the exiles, having met the Spanish fleet, totally defeated it, and reduced North Holland and Mons. Many cities hastened to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia



Words linked to "Unwitting" :   unaware, unintended, incognizant, uninformed, witting



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