unread

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English

Etymology

From un- +‎ read.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈʌn.ɹɛd/ (adjective and noun)
  • Audio (US):(file)
    (adjective and noun)
  • Rhymes: -ɛd (adjective and noun)
  • IPA(key): /ˈʌn.ɹiːd/ (verb)
  • Rhymes: -iːd (verb)

Adjective

unread (not comparable)

  1. Not having been read.
    • 1700, Charles Hopkins, The Art of Love, (after Ovid’s Ars Amatoria), London: Joseph Wild, “The Muse,” p. 36,
      At first, perhaps, unread your Note’s return’d,
      Your Person slighted, and your Passion scorn’d.
    • 1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC:
      ‘PRIVATE: for the hands of J. G. Utterson ALONE and in case of his predecease to be destroyed unread,’ so it was emphatically superscribed; and the lawyer dreaded to behold the contents.
    The book I got for my 18th birthday remained unread until my retirement.
  2. Not having read; uneducated.
    • c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii]:
      In fortune’s love […] the bold and coward,
      The wise and fool, the artist and unread,
      The hard and soft seem all affined and kin:
      But, in the wind and tempest of her frown,
      Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,
      Puffing at all, winnows the light away;
    • 1796, Elizabeth Inchbald, Nature and Art, Dublin: P. Wogan et al., Chapter 22, p. 111,
      The only child of two doating parents, she never had been taught the necessity of resignation—untutored, unread, unused to reflect, but knowing how to feel
    • 1890, Frances Willard, Address before the Seventeenth Convention of the World Woman’s Christian Temperance Union at Atlanta, Georgia, in William Jennings Bryan (editor), The World’s Famous Orations, New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1906, Volume 10, p. 162,
      only those unread in the biography of genius imagine themselves to be original.

Translations

Verb

unread (third-person singular simple present unreads, present participle unreading, simple past and past participle unread)

  1. (transitive) To undo the process of reading.
    That book was terrible! I wish I could unread it.
  2. (computing, transitive) To flag (a previously read e-mail or similar message) as not having been read.

Noun

unread (plural unreads)

  1. (computing) An unread email or instant message.
    • 2011, Hugh D. Culver, Give Me a Break: The Art of Making Time Work for You, page 129:
      You will have fewer 'Unreads' staring at you from your Inbox, and will feel—and be—more productive.
    • 2022, Michelle McCraw, Boss Me:
      I flipped from the calendar app to the email app and logged in to view Cooper's. The unreads were staggering; I'd have to triage them later.

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