ungained

Adjective

ungained (not comparable)

1. That one has not acquired possession of.
   • Men prize the thing ungained more than it is;1602, William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida
   • The streams run on, in bold, malicious haste, His lip can touch the fruit, but cannot taste; In vain he struggles from his chain to burst The stream, the fruit's ungained—unquenched his thirst!1842, Miss Emma Garland, Ovid's Epistles: In English Verse, page 233
2. Not reached.
   • ungained heights
   • He fancied four of his children stood there, hand in hand, and stared at him rather mournfully; and that Dorothy was that statue with the fingers of its right hand on the top bar of the tapestry-seated chair which was in fact the commode Titball had provided. A commode as yet ungained.2010, Rosalind Belben, Hound Music, page 71
3. Unaccomplished; not achieved.
   • What ought to be gained by industry and economy or left ungained is often secured by fraud in some form among the class spoken of as enterprising and substantial citizens,1900, Imelda Maud Shanklin, The Laborer and His Hire, page 331
   • It is always greater, and the difference is the ungained work and the “lost work,” which has not yet been discussed.1904, James Swinburne, Entropy: Or, Thermodynamics from an Engineer's Standpoint
4. Not won over.
   • There was another person, however, still ungained ; and that was no other than her footman, whose secrecy our hero attempted to secure in the morning by an handsome present, which he received with many professions of gratitude and devotion to his service; yet this complaisance was nothing but a...1784, Tobias George Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle
   • How many brethren alienated for all time, who might have been won back to God and to us, because we have hammered at the conscience merely, with the heart ungained — with the heart, I may say, almost unsought!2015, John Nelson Darby, Collected Writings by John Nelson Darby Volume Forty
5. Not increased.
   • Note that the signal shot noise is taken as the square root of the ungained signal times the MCP gain.1994, Helen C. Marz, Helen C. Titus, Amir Waks, Image acquisition and scientific imaging systems, page 87
   • ungained weight