Word.ws English Dictionary

unlooked for

unlooked for adjective: not expected or anticipated; unforeseen.

Adjective

unlooked for (comparative more unlooked for, superlative most unlooked for)

  1. Not expected or anticipated; unforeseen.
    • A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege,
      And all unlook’d for from your highness’ mouth:1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to...
    • And now he perisheth
      With this unlooked for, undeservèd death:1865, “Philoctetes”, in Edward Hayes Plumptre, transl., The Tragedies of Sophocles, London: Isbister, Appendix, page 495
  2. Not looked for, not searched for.
    • […] send them to the Well for the water of life: there shall they finde their fortunes unlooked for […]c. 1590 (date written), G[eorge] P[eele], The Old Wiues Tale. […], London: […] Iohn Danter, for Raph Hancocke, and Iohn Hardie, […], published 1595, →OCLC, [lines 290-292]
    • This vvas an Adventure indeed unlook’d for, and perfectly undesign’d by me; tho’ I vvas not ſo paſt the Merry part of Life, as to forget hovv to behave, vvhen a Fop ſo blinded by his Appetite ſhould not knovv an old VVoman from a young: […]1722 (indicated as 1721), [Daniel Defoe], The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, &c. […], London: […] W[illiam Rufus] Chetwood, […]; and T. Edling, […], published 1722, →OCLC, page...
    Synonyms:
    unsought

Synonyms of unlooked for

Forms of unlooked for

comparativemore unlooked for
superlativemost unlooked for
alternative formunlooked-for

Origin of unlooked for

From un- + looked for.

Questions about unlooked for

What does unlooked for mean?
Unlooked for means not expected or anticipated; unforeseen.
What part of speech is unlooked for?
Unlooked for is an adjective.

Words near unlooked for in the dictionary

  1. unlogical
  2. unlogically
  3. unlonely
  4. unlonesome
  5. unlooked
  6. unlooked for
  7. unlooked-at
  8. unlooked-for
  9. unlooking
  10. unloop
  11. unloopable

Source and license

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