unread

/ˈʌn.ɹɛd/

unread adjective: not having been read.

Adjective

unread (not comparable)

Not having been read.
- At first, perhaps, unread your Note’s return’d,
  Your Person slighted, and your Passion scorn’d.1700, Charles Hopkins, The Art of Love, (after Ovid’s Ars Amatoria), London: Joseph Wild, “The Muse,” p. 36
- ‘Private: for the hands of J. G. Utterson alone and in case of his predecease to be destroyed unread,’ so it was emphatically superscribed; and the lawyer dreaded to behold the contents.1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Remarkable Incident of Dr. Lanyon”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, pages 59–60
Not having read; uneducated.
- In fortune’s love […] the bold and coward,
  The wise and fool, the artist and unread,
  The hard and soft seem all affined and kin:
  But, in the wind and tempest of her frown,
  Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,
  Puffing at all, winnows the light away;c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
- The only child of two doating parents, she never had been taught the necessity of resignation—untutored, unread, unused to reflect, but knowing how to feel […]1796, Elizabeth Inchbald, Nature and Art, Dublin: P. Wogan et al., Chapter 22, p. 111

unread (third-person singular simple present unreads, present participle unreading, simple past and past participle unread)

(transitive) To undo the process of reading.
- That book was terrible! I wish I could unread it.
(transitive) To flag (a previously read e-mail or similar message) as not having been read.

unread (plural unreads)

An unread email or instant message.
- You will have fewer 'Unreads' staring at you from your Inbox, and will feel—and be—more productive.2011, Hugh D. Culver, Give Me a Break: The Art of Making Time Work for You, page 129
- I flipped from the calendar app to the email app and logged in to view Cooper's. The unreads were staggering; I'd have to triage them later.2022, Michelle McCraw, Boss Me

படிக்காத, படிப்பறிவற்ற

Verb
third-person singular present	unreads
present participle	unreading
past participle	unread
past	unread
Noun
plural	unreads

From un- + read.

What does unread mean?: Unread means not having been read.
What is unread in Tamil?: Unread in Tamil is படிக்காத, படிப்பறிவற்ற. See Unread meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is unread?: Unread can be an adjective, a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce unread?: Unread is pronounced /ˈʌn.ɹɛd/.

Adapted from Wiktionary: unread (page history and authors); unread (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-unread.ogg.

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