unwitting
unwitting adjective: unaware or uninformed; oblivious.
Adjective
unwitting (comparative more unwitting, superlative most unwitting)
- Unaware or uninformed; oblivious.
- We've located the perfect site for experimentation on live test subjects. Kadara's "badlands" offer unsupervised access to unwitting test subjects free from any lawful or ethical constraints.2017, BioWare, Mass Effect: Andromeda (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →OCLC, PC, scene: Location of Experiment
- Synonyms:
- clueless, ignorant, benighted, cimmerian, foolish, ill-informed, illiterate, innocent, lack-learning, lay
- Unintentional.
- (transl.) 4th century BC, Plato, Sophist, 230a
Some people, apparently, have thought about it and reached the conclusion that every case of being misinformed is unwitting. - Persistent but unwitting excessive speed over a sharply curved turnout forming part of a double junction, which resulted in slight track distortion, was the primary cause of the derailment of an electric m.u. at Bethnal Green on Saturday, June 17 last.1963 May, “News and Comment: Derailment at Bethnal Green”, in Modern Railways, page 299
- Synonyms:
- inadvertent, unintended, accidental, designless, involuntary, undesigned, unintentional, unplanned, unpurposed
- Antonyms:
- deliberate
- (transl.) 4th century BC, Plato, Sophist, 230a
unwitting meaning in Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada
unwitting in Tamil
- உள்நோக்கமிலா
unwitting in Malayalam
- അറിയാത്ത, അറിയാതെ ചെയ്യുന്ന, മനസ്സിരുത്താതെ ചെയ്തുപോകുന്ന
unwitting in Kannada
- ತಿಳಿಯದ, ಗಮನಿಸದ, ಬೇಕೆಂದೇ ಮಾಡಿರದ, ಬುದ್ಧಿಪೂರ್ವಕವಲ್ಲದ, ಅನುದ್ದಿಷ್ಟ, ಉದ್ದೇಶರಹಿತ
Examples of unwitting in a sentence
- Otherwise, the thousands of young men and women entering and exiting the clubs are his unwitting entertainment.
- Amphitryon said finally: “Creon says that he was the unwitting cause of Menoeceus’ death.
- Another element in the incitement, however unwitting, was political.
Synonyms of unwitting
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
- philistine
- tenebrose
- unaware
- uncultivated
- uncultured
- uneducated
- unenlightened
- unerudite
- uninformed
- unknowing
- unknowledgeable
- unlearned
- unlearnt
- unlettered
- unmindful
- unread
- unscholarly
- unschooled
- untaught
- untrained
- untutored
- inadvertent
- unintended
- accidental
- designless
- involuntary
- undesigned
- unintentional
- unplanned
- unpurposed
Antonyms
Forms of unwitting
| comparative | more unwitting |
|---|---|
| superlative | most unwitting |
Origin of unwitting
From Middle English unwittinge, unwitand, from Old English unwitende (“unwitting; not knowing; unaware; unconscious”), from Proto-Germanic *unwitandz (“not knowing”), equivalent to un- + witting. Cognate with West Frisian ûnwittend, Dutch onwetend, German Low German unwetend, German unwissend and unwissentlich, Icelandic óvitandi.
Words formed from unwitting
Words that rhyme with unwitting
Questions about unwitting
- What does unwitting mean?
- Unwitting means unaware or uninformed; oblivious.
- What is unwitting in Tamil?
- Unwitting in Tamil is உள்நோக்கமிலா. See Unwitting meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is unwitting?
- Unwitting is an adjective.
Words near unwitting in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: unwitting (page history and authors); unwitting (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); unwitting (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); unwitting (Kannada 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:
Cite this entry: “unwitting.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unwitting. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.