terra incognita

Noun

terra incognita

1. Land that has never been explored, mapped, or surveyed.
   • Behold me now in the full career of my voyage of discovery, exploring the James River in the steamboat, on a clear, hot fifteenth of June, and looking with a sagacious perspicacity on the commonest sights of this terra incognita.1832, John Pendleton Kennedy, “Introductory Epistle”, in Swallow Barn; or, A Sojourn in the Old Dominion, volume 1, page 5
   • It is needless to say how much interest attaches to the far larger unknown portion of this great island, the greatest terra incognita that still remains for the naturalist to explore, and the only region where altogether new and unimagined forms of life may perhaps be found.1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., page 428

   Synonyms:

   uncharted territory

   Antonyms:

   home ground, homeland

2. (broadly) Ideas or concepts that have not yet been tried or explored.
   • The concept of the unconscious or an inner terra incognita, an unknown country of the psyche that precedes and predicates the Cartesian subject, the focal point of rational consciousness, was a revolutionary idea.2009, Gary Clark, Quadrant, November 2009, No. 461 (Volume LIII, Number 11), Quadrant Magazine Limited, page 9
   • How commonly stinging insects encounter this problem is scientific terra incognita.2016, Justin O. Schmidt, The Sting of the Wild, Johns Hopkins University Press, →ISBN, page 18

   Synonyms:

   uncharted territory, uncharted water