unknown quantity
unknown quantity noun: a person or thing whose nature or value is a mystery.
Noun
unknown quantity (plural unknown quantities)
- A person or thing whose nature or value is a mystery.
- Whatever he had learned of himself was here of no avail. He was an unknown quantity.1895 October, Stephen Crane, chapter I, in The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, page 14
- . . . the Evening Post of this city to refer to him recently as "the young Belgian painter," and to the general public he is an unknown quantity.1907, The Bookman, volume 25, page 166
- Antonyms:
- known quantity, household name
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see unknown, quantity.
- Many of the applications of mathematics require that you identify an unknown quantity, assign a variable to that quantity, and then attempt to express another unknown quantity in terms of that variable.2012 January 1, Richard N. Aufmann, Joanne Lockwood, Beginning Algebra, Cengage Learning, →ISBN, page 77
- So promising was the Skunk Works' stealth cruise missile offering, the USAF ordered an unknown quantity of these missiles under a highly classified program dubbed Senior Prom.2016, Steve Pace, The Projects of Skunk Works: 75 Years of Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs, Voyageur Press, →ISBN, page 145
- Synonyms:
- blank canvas, enigma
unknown quantity meaning in Tamil and Sanskrit
unknown quantity in Tamil
- தெரியாக்கணியம்
unknown quantity in Sanskrit
- an unknown quantity
- तावत् tā́vat
Examples of unknown quantity in a sentence
- The big French diesel is something of an unknown quantity, whereas many French-built electric locomotives developing 3,000 h.p. and more have been well proved in service.1963 June, “Beyond the Channel: France: High-power diesels”, in Modern Railways, page 417:
- In spite of more than three decades of public service, I knew I was an unknown quantity to many of my countrymen and to much of the world when I assumed office.1971, Lyndon Johnson, “"I feel like I have already been here a year"”, in The Vantage Point, Holt, Reinhart & Winston, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC...
- Amin Gemayel, it is felt here, is an unknown quantity and it is impossible to predict how he will act.1982 September 22, Henry Tanner, “Gemayel Brothers Assessed in Syria”, in New York Times, retrieved 09 Jan 2016:
- [H]e was still an unknown quantity – a young, untested figure.2015 December 6, “Congratulations on 10 years, David Cameron - but don't rest on your laurels”, in Telegraph, UK, retrieved 09 Jan 2016:
Synonyms of unknown quantity
Antonyms
Forms of unknown quantity
| plural | unknown quantities |
|---|
Questions about unknown quantity
- What does unknown quantity mean?
- Unknown quantity means a person or thing whose nature or value is a mystery.
- What is unknown quantity in Tamil?
- Unknown quantity in Tamil is தெரியாக்கணியம். See Unknown quantity meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use unknown quantity in a sentence?
- The big French diesel is something of an unknown quantity, whereas many French-built electric locomotives developing 3,000 h.p. and more have been well proved in service.
- What part of speech is unknown quantity?
- Unknown quantity is a noun.
- What is the plural of unknown quantity?
- The plural of unknown quantity is unknown quantities.
Words near unknown quantity in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: unknown quantity (page history and authors); unknown quantity (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); तावत् (Sanskrit) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-unknown quantity.ogg.
Cite this entry: “unknown quantity.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unknown_quantity. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.