Word.ws English Dictionary

unwares

UK/ʌnˈwɛːz/

unwares adverb: unexpectedly, suddenly.

Adverb

unwares (not comparable)

  1. (archaic) Unexpectedly, suddenly.
    • Still as he went, he craftie stales did lay / With cunning traines him to entrap vnwares.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

Origin of unwares

From Old English unwæres, unwares, from unwær (“unware”).

Questions about unwares

What does unwares mean?
Unwares means unexpectedly, suddenly.
What part of speech is unwares?
Unwares is an adverb.
How do you pronounce unwares?
Unwares is pronounced /ʌnˈwɛːz/ (UK).

Words near unwares in the dictionary

  1. unwarbled
  2. unwarded
  3. unware
  4. unwarehoused
  5. unwarely
  6. unwares
  7. unwarie
  8. unwarier
  9. unwariest
  10. unwarily
  11. unwariness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unwares (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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