Word.ws English Dictionary

unberufen

unberufen interjection: touch wood; knock on wood; an injunction to fate that nothing will go wrong.

Interjection

  1. (dated) Touch wood; knock on wood; an injunction to fate that nothing will go wrong.
    • "Unberufen ! " cries Sarah, with a shudder that is not all affectation, " do not mention that accursed name ; I could have sworn that I heard her voice just now !"1883, Rhoda Broughton, Belinda
    • " Unberufen !" he cried. "Unberufen!" she echoed. Then their glances met and they laughed...1904, Ralph Henry Barbour, Kitty of the roses

Examples of unberufen in a sentence

  • Bending over, Ethel turned back the cloth and thumped on the under side of the table. / "Unberufen and Absit omen," she said hastily.1905, Anna Chapin Ray, Hamilton Brock Fuller, On the Firing Line, EBook edition, Project Gutenberg, published 2009:
  • And I am working so well (unberufen!) with my admirable Secretary; I shouldn't really dare to ask her to join our little caravan...1920, Percy Lubbock, editor, The Letters of Henry James:

Origin of unberufen

From German unberufen (“let it not be called down on me”).

Questions about unberufen

What does unberufen mean?
Unberufen means touch wood; knock on wood; an injunction to fate that nothing will go wrong.
How do you use unberufen in a sentence?
Bending over, Ethel turned back the cloth and thumped on the under side of the table. / "Unberufen and Absit omen," she said hastily.
What part of speech is unberufen?
Unberufen is an interjection.

Words near unberufen in the dictionary

  1. unberth
  2. unberthed
  3. unberthing
  4. unberthings
  5. unberths
  6. unberufen
  7. unbeseeched
  8. unbeseeching
  9. unbeseem
  10. unbeseemed
  11. unbeseeming

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unberufen (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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