Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Having an unknown or unacknowledged name.
  • adjective Having an unknown or withheld authorship or agency.
  • adjective Having no distinctive character or recognition factor.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Wanting a name; not named and determined, as an animal not assigned to any species.
  • Without any name acknowledged, as that of author, contributor, or the like: as, an anonymous pamphlet; an anonymous subscription.
  • Of unknown name; whose name is withheld: as, an anonymous author.
  • Often abbreviated to anon.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Nameless; of unknown name; also, of unknown or unavowed authorship

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

  • adjective not comparable Lacking a name; not named and determined, as an animal not assigned to any species.
  • adjective not comparable Without any name acknowledged of a person responsible, as that of author, contributor, or the like.
  • adjective not comparable Of unknown name; whose name is withheld
  • adjective comparable Lacking individuality.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective having no known name or identity or known source
  • adjective not known or lacking marked individuality

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Late Latin anōnymus, from Greek anōnumos, nameless : an-, without; see a– + onuma, name (influenced by earlier nōnumnos, nameless); see nŏ̄-men- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Borrowed into English around 1600 from Late Latin anonymus, from Ancient Greek ἀνώνυμος (anōnumos, "without name"), from ἀν- (an, "without") + ὄνυμα (onuma), Aeolic dialectal form of ὄνομα (onoma, "name").

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