Word.ws English Dictionary

unpinioned

unpinioned adjective: of a bird: not having the pinions of its wings cut off, or its wings otherwise disabled, to prevent it from flying. Also the simple past and past participle of unpinion.

Adjective

unpinioned

  1. Of a bird: not having the pinions of its wings cut off, or its wings otherwise disabled, to prevent it from flying.
    • [W]hile the vvorks of others fly like unpinioned ſvvans, I find my ovvn move as heavily as a nevv-plucked gooſe.1759 November 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Oliver] Goldsmith, “Miscellaneous”, in The Bee, a Select Collection of Essays, on the Most Interesting and Entertaining Subjects, […], new edition, number IV...
  2. (also, archaic, figuratively) Free from restraint.

Also used as

unpinioned is also the simple past and past participle of unpinion.

Origin of unpinioned

From unpinion + -ed.

Questions about unpinioned

What does unpinioned mean?
Unpinioned means of a bird: not having the pinions of its wings cut off, or its wings otherwise disabled, to prevent it from flying.
What part of speech is unpinioned?
Unpinioned is an adjective.

Words near unpinioned in the dictionary

  1. unpinches
  2. unpinching
  3. unpindownable
  4. unpining
  5. unpinion
  6. unpinioned
  7. unpinioning
  8. unpinions
  9. unpinked
  10. unpinnable
  11. unpinned

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unpinioned (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:

Cite this entry: “unpinioned.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unpinioned. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.