Word.ws English Dictionary

unlesse

unlesse is the obsolete spelling of unless.

Meaning of unless

Conjunction

unless

  1. Except on a specified condition; if not.
    • I’m leaving unless I get a pay rise.
  2. If not; used with counterfactual conditionals.
    • Who would know of Alexander or Caesar, or would respect the Stoics or the Peripatetics, unless they had been distinguished by the memorials of writers?1159, John of Salisbury, Policraticus, edited by Cary J. Nederman, Cambridge University Press, 1990, page 3 (Google Books view)
  3. Except if; used with hypothetical conditionals.
    • Q. If Lieutenant P. had given the word "Fire," would you have fired, and at what?—A. I should not have known, unless he had told me what to fire at.1809, The Naval Chronicle for 1809: Containing a General and Biographical History of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom with a Variety of Original Papers on Nautical Subjects. Vol. XXII. (from July...

Questions about unlesse

What is unlesse the obsolete spelling of?
Unlesse is the obsolete spelling of unless.

Words near unlesse in the dictionary

  1. unlenited
  2. unlensed
  3. unlent
  4. unlesioned
  5. unless
  6. unlesse
  7. unlessen
  8. unlessened
  9. unlessening
  10. unlessoned
  11. unlesss

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unlesse (page history and authors); unless (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: “unlesse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unlesse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.