Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use unwritten in a sentence

20 example sentences · adjective

Unwritten means not written. Example: “It's an unwritten rule that you lock the gate when you leave the swimming pool.”

Examples of unwritten by meaning

adjectiveNot written.

  • The most important rule is unwritten but not unspoken.2002 August 25, Erin McKean, “THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 8-25-02: ON LANGUAGE; Neologist”, in The New York Times

adjectiveOral or otherwise communicated without writing.

  • "Our language is unwritten and our history and our deeds are passed down from father to son," Wazir Ghulam Mahdi told me.1987 October, Galen Rowell, “Baltistan: The 20th Century Comes to Shangri-la”, in National Geographic, volume 172, number 4, page 526

adjectiveImplicit or understood but not formally articulated.

  • It's an unwritten rule that you lock the gate when you leave the swimming pool.

More sentences with unwritten

  • How could Christians and other kinds of religionists justify being ruled by laws and rules, written and unwritten, that go against their faith?From the entry religionist
  • The condemnation of the unwritten kind is based on grapholatry, the worship of writing.2024, Dr. Geoff Lindsey, 10:24 from the start, in English actors get this WRONG when they do American accents. From the entry grapholatry
  • Also the computerful of garbage upstairs and the unwritten Great American Novel.2015, Peter Israel, chapter 2, in Hush Money, Open Road Media, →ISBN. From the entry computerful
  • According to the old unwritten code of the Los Angeles Police Department, Dovon's was a nothing murder.2015, Jill Leovy, Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, Spiegel & Grau, →ISBN, page 6. From the entry NHI
  • There’s another unwritten rule of gardening – never count the money spent on whatever you’re growing.1994 April 16, “Today’s showplace is tomorrow’s arid wasteland”, in The Item, volume 99, number 181, Sumter, S.C., page 3A. From the entry bugicide
  • An acronym drifts unwritten about the system; those are NHI crimes–No Human Involved.1989 May 14, Los Angeles Times, page 1. From the entry NHI
  • Isn’t that the unwritten law of the land?2017 July 16, Brandon Nowalk, “Chickens and dragons come home to roost on Game Of Thrones (newbies)”, in The Onion AV Club. From the entry law of the land
  • She glides along, her skirt touching the grass top as she sways to the beat of unwritten songs.2008, Chris Fabry, Dogwood, Tyndale, →ISBN, page 154. From the entry grass top
  • My barechestedness ran counter to some unwritten subdivision behavioral code and had earned me some hard, disgusted stares from my neighbors.2007, Brock Clarke, An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, →ISBN, page 25. From the entry barechestedness
  • The tao of Lao Tzu was a cosmic tao, inner and unwritten, a tao of Nature, while the tao of Confucius was moral and written.2021, Olof G. Lidin, From Taoism to Einstein, page 196. From the entry tao
  • Cycling's complex etiquette contains an unwritten rule that riders in contention for a race win should not be penalised for sheer misfortune.2012 July 15, Richard Williams, Tour de France 2012: Carpet tacks cannot force Bradley Wiggins off track, Guardian Unlimited. From the entry etiquette
  • There was some unwritten code of namesmanship which attributed each house to a former owner who might, or might not, still be alive.2002, Frederick L. Cullen, Secrets Are Anonymous. From the entry namesmanship
  • The method of writing Farsi is logical, although reading can be trickier, as one has to guess at the unwritten consonants of unfamiliar words.1999, Maria O'Shea, Culture shock! Iran, page 75. From the entry Farsi
  • Even the great world as yet undiscovered, the cities as yet unfounded, and the history as yet unwritten, are lost: fallen from the beginning.1980, Helen Louise Gardner, John Carey, English Renaissance studies, page 268. From the entry unfounded
  • Over the past ten years, a series of high-profile CEOs have broken unwritten omertas not to address the contentious challenges posed by climate change, human rights, and increased transparency.2010, Aron Cramer, Zachary Karabell, “Leadership”, in Sustainable Excellence: The Future of Business in a Fast-changing World, New York…. From the entry omertà
  • The second is an unwritten rule that when a museum deaccessions a picture, the money should be used to purchase art only of the same period.2010, Don Thompson, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark, Aurum Press Limited, →ISBN. From the entry deaccession
  • There was an unwritten rule in The Kerryman: names of "found ons" cannot be kept out of the paper, except in the case of a Garda or a clergyman.2008 May 21, Con Houlihan, “Strange stigma of being 'found on'”, in Irish Independent. From the entry found on

Meaning of unwritten

  1. adjective Not written.
  2. adjective Oral or otherwise communicated without writing.
  3. adjective Implicit or understood but not formally articulated.

Full definition of unwritten

Questions about unwritten in a sentence

How do you use unwritten in a sentence?
Unwritten is used as an adjective. For example: “It's an unwritten rule that you lock the gate when you leave the swimming pool.”
What is a short sentence with unwritten?
“Isn’t that the unwritten law of the land?”
What does unwritten mean?
Unwritten means not written.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unwritten (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 unwritten in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/unwritten. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.