Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Unknown. [Obsolete or dialectal.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Scotland unknown

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

un- +‎ kenned

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Examples

  • Then there was singing in the evening, till by some unkenned wile on her part fifteen or sixteen of the better singers got into the habit of dropping in at the manse two nights a week for purposes unknown.

    Bog-Myrtle and Peat Tales Chiefly of Galloway Gathered from the Years 1889 to 1895 1887

  • Now Osberne heard and understood all, and the men are all ready for him, a thousand and three hundred by tale; so he makes no delay and leads them by ways unkenned so diligently that he breaks forth on them before they be duly ordered, though they be all out in the fields drawing together.

    The Sundering Flood William Morris 1865

  • He intended thus to see, while himself unknown, "the gentlewoman who sould have been his spouse, thinking to spy her pulchritud and behaviour unkenned by her."

    Royal Edinburgh Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets George Reid 1862

  • So a while they sat talking, all of them, and the squire and the sergeant aforesaid were not a little timorous of the adventure of making that stead unkenned their sleeping chamber; and to while away the time, their lords made them tell tales such as they knew concerning that place; and both they said that they had never erst come into the dale but a very little way, and said that they had done so then but trusting in their lords 'bidding and the luck of the Quest.

    The Water of the Wondrous Isles William Morris 1865

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