Word.ws English Dictionary

little did one know

little did one know adverb: used to show a relevant fact that is unknown to a person, or that the result or sequence of events differs greatly from what one had expected with the little knowledge he or she had about the situation beforehand.

Adverb

little did one know (not comparable)

  1. Used to show a relevant fact that is unknown to a person, or that the result or sequence of events differs greatly from what one had expected with the little knowledge he or she had about the situation beforehand.
    • I was speaking ill of Fred; little did I know that he was right behind me, listening in.
    • Little did we know, we would be stuck in traffic for hours before finally making it back home.

Questions about little did one know

What does little did one know mean?
Little did one know means used to show a relevant fact that is unknown to a person, or that the result or sequence of events differs greatly from what one had expected with the little knowledge he or she had about the situation beforehand.
What part of speech is little did one know?
Little did one know is an adverb.

Words near little did one know in the dictionary

  1. Little Dalby
  2. Little Desert
  3. Little Dewchurch
  4. little Dick
  5. little Dick Fisher
  6. little did one know
  7. Little Dipper
  8. little dodo
  9. little dodos
  10. little dog syndrome
  11. Little Domesday

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: little did one know (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-little did one know.wav.

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