Word.ws English Dictionary

unfinished business

unfinished business noun: a matter that still has to be completed or dealt with, sometimes with an ominous or threatening implication.

Noun

unfinished business (uncountable)

  1. A matter that still has to be completed or dealt with, sometimes with an ominous or threatening implication.
    • He gives the impression that it took time for him to come to terms with his feelings towards her, admitting that, “I'm sure we had some unfinished business”, […]2001 May 12, Robert Potts, quoting Paul Muldoon, “The poet at play”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
    • The measures for rail that were genuinely new were welcomed, although some had hoped for more. Many of these tied up loose ends around the network - unfinished business left hanging by the last government.2024 November 13, Dickon Ross, “Opinion”, in RAIL, number 1022, page 3
    1. One or more things that a person intended or was destined to do in life, and cannot escape the earthly realm even after death until completed.

Questions about unfinished business

What does unfinished business mean?
Unfinished business means a matter that still has to be completed or dealt with, sometimes with an ominous or threatening implication.
What part of speech is unfinished business?
Unfinished business is a noun.

Words near unfinished business in the dictionary

  1. unfinical
  2. unfinicky
  3. unfinish
  4. unfinishable
  5. unfinished
  6. unfinished business
  7. unfinishedly
  8. unfinishedness
  9. unfinisht
  10. unfinite
  11. unfinned

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unfinished business (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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Cite this entry: “unfinished business.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unfinished_business. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.