Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use unawares in a sentence

10 example sentences · adverb

Unawares means unexpectedly or by surprise. Example: “I'm afraid I've taken the wrong coat, unawares.”

Examples of unawares by meaning

adverbInadvertently.

  • I'm afraid I've taken the wrong coat, unawares.

More sentences with unawares

  • They were taken unawares and overcome when the room filled with a lethal, odorless gas.From the entry odorless
  • They were taken unawares and overcome when the room filled with a lethal, odourless gas.From the entry odourless
  • Deepwood is a motte-and-bailey castle in the midst of thick forest, easy to creep up on unawares.2011, George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons, page 231. From the entry motte and bailey
  • They were uncannily sensitive to any movement near them, and hard to take unawares.1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 43. From the entry uncannily
  • Yet, she had outflanked him, taken him unawares, and he had fired not one shot.1911 October 26, Max Beerbohm, chapter XVII, in Zuleika Dobson, or, An Oxford Love Story, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: John Lane…. From the entry esprit de l'escalier
  • The Indians, making a hasty inference from a trivial phenomenon, arrived unawares at a probably correct conclusion.1900, Andrew Lang, chapter 1, in The Making of Religion. From the entry phenomenon
  • We shall entertain angels not unawares but awares.1951, Shaw Desmond, Pilgrim to Paradise: An Autobiography, London: Rider and Company, page 272. From the entry awares
  • Even though he became a priest unawares and now cannot escape, he warns other young men to avoid this life of misery.1993, Peter A. Dykema, Heiko Augustinus Oberman, Anticlericalism: in late medieval and early modern Europe, page 457. From the entry archfool
  • That is the little bit of essential information which enables us to complete our devoir – without it we are just ordinary people, dispossessed, taken unawares: the original sin!1983, Lawrence Durrell, Sebastian, or Ruling Passions (The Avignon Quintet; 4), London; Boston, Mass.: Faber & Faber, ISBN…. From the entry devoir

Meaning of unawares

  1. adverb Unexpectedly or by surprise.
  2. adverb Inadvertently.
  3. adverb Without plan or forethought.

Full definition of unawares

Questions about unawares in a sentence

How do you use unawares in a sentence?
Unawares is used as an adverb. For example: “I'm afraid I've taken the wrong coat, unawares.”
What is a short sentence with unawares?
“I'm afraid I've taken the wrong coat, unawares.”
What does unawares mean?
Unawares means unexpectedly or by surprise.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unawares (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use unawares in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/unawares. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.