Word.ws English Dictionary

unhandled

unhandled adjective: not having been handled.

Adjective

unhandled (not comparable)

  1. Not having been handled.
  2. (figuratively) Untrained, untame and beyond handling.
    • […] do but note a wild and wanton herd,
      Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,
      Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
      Which is the hot condition of their blood; […]c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  3. Without a handle; handleless.
    • Some light came dimly through cracks around that connecting, unhandled door, and through the roof.1986, Norma Johnston, The Watcher in the Mist, page 170
  4. Not having an associated handler routine.
    • an unhandled event; an unhandled exception

Origin of unhandled

From un- + handled.

Questions about unhandled

What does unhandled mean?
Unhandled means not having been handled.
What part of speech is unhandled?
Unhandled is an adjective.

Words near unhandled in the dictionary

  1. unhandiest
  2. unhandily
  3. unhandiness
  4. unhanding
  5. unhandleable
  6. unhandled
  7. unhands
  8. unhandseled
  9. unhandselled
  10. unhandsome
  11. unhandsomely

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unhandled (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: “unhandled.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unhandled. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.