Word.ws English Dictionary

unshriven

unshriven adjective: not shriven.

Adjective

unshriven (not comparable)

  1. Not shriven.
    • Monaldeschi staggered against the wall, and remained for a few minutes in a state of almost insensibility, when the Chevalier, drawing his sword, pointed to the Father, who stood nearly as pale and aghast as the man whose confession he was called upon so suddenly to receive. The prisoner sprung...1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter VI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 57
    • In thee there lives the energy / Can make the turf a heaven, / May birds that peck thy candle die / By Parson Rook unshriven!1893, Norman Gale, “To a Glow-Worm”, in Orchard Songs, London: [Charles] Elkin Mathews & John Lane; New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, →OCLC, page 100

Origin of unshriven

From un- + shriven.

Questions about unshriven

What does unshriven mean?
Unshriven means not shriven.
What part of speech is unshriven?
Unshriven is an adjective.

Words near unshriven in the dictionary

  1. unshrinkingly
  2. unshrinks
  3. unshrived
  4. unshriveled
  5. unshrivelled
  6. unshriven
  7. unshroud
  8. unshrouded
  9. unshrouding
  10. unshrouds
  11. unshrubbed

Source and license

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