Definitions

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

  • adjective Not read, studied, or perused.
  • adjective Having read little; lacking in knowledge acquired by reading.
  • adjective Not versed in a specified subject.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Bad advice or counsel.
  • Not read; not perused.
  • Untaught; not learned in books.

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

  • adjective Not read or perused.
  • adjective Not versed in literature; illiterate.

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

  • adjective Not having been read.
  • adjective Not having read; uneducated.
  • noun archaic Bad advice or counsel.

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

  • adjective not informed through reading

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

un- +‎ read

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English unred, unræd, from Old English unrǣd ("folly, foolish plan; crime, mischief, injury, plot, treachery"), equivalent to un- +‎ rede.

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Examples

  • | News | Telegraph: The average Briton spends more than �4,000 on books during his or her lifetime but nearly half of them remain unread, a new study claims.

    Archive 2007-03-11 Bill Crider 2007

  • Now that I have a mortgage and a child and bills to pay, and little spare time and a blog, the few magazines that I still subscribe to remain unread for months at a time.

    Archive 2007-03-01 2007

  • BTW, I very much enjoy your blog, and it has inspired me lately to go out and have the librarians dig up "Connections" from the vaults of the Buffalo, NY library, whence it had lain unread for quite some time, as there was not even a barcode for checking it out.

    Odd picture collection Heather McDougal 2007

  • I am persuasively convinced by the Endsleigh Hotelier that Gilead by Marilynne Robinson should not remain unread on my shelves any longer so that's in the mix.

    52 entries from July 2006 2006

  • I am persuasively convinced by the Endsleigh Hotelier that Gilead by Marilynne Robinson should not remain unread on my shelves any longer so that's in the mix.

    Sunday Confession:Travellin' light 2006

  • I am persuasively convinced by the Endsleigh Hotelier that Gilead by Marilynne Robinson should not remain unread on my shelves any longer so that's in the mix.

    Sunday Confession:Travellin' light 2006

  • How better to ensure that Faulkner and Melville remain unread by the young than to invoke their names in praise of some new bore every week?

    A Reader's Manifesto 2001

  • He stared at her for a moment, his expression unread­able.

    Disordered Minds Walters, Minette 2003

  • How better to ensure that Faulkner and Melville remain unread by the young than to invoke their names in praise of some new bore every week?

    A Reader's Manifesto 2001

  • Shakespeare will remain unread, except by a very few people.

    The Theatre as a Desirable Cultural Force 1937

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