UNSETTLED

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does unsettled mean? 

• UNSETTLED (adjective)
  The adjective UNSETTLED has 4 senses:

1. still in doubt

2. not settled or established

3. subject to change

4. not yet settled

  Familiarity information: UNSETTLED used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNSETTLED (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Still in doubt

Context example:

an unsettled state of mind

Similar:

doubtful; tentative (unsettled in mind or opinion)

open; undecided; undetermined; unresolved (not brought to a conclusion; subject to further thought)

Antonym:

settled (established or decided beyond dispute or doubt)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Not settled or established

Context example:

an unsettled lifestyle

Similar:

aimless; drifting; floating; vagabond; vagrant (continually changing especially as from one abode or occupation to another)

erratic; planetary; wandering (having no fixed course)

homeless; stateless (without nationality or citizenship)

migrant; migratory (habitually moving from place to place especially in search of seasonal work)

mobile; nomadic; peregrine; roving; wandering (migratory)

peripatetic; wayfaring (traveling especially on foot)

itinerant (traveling from place to place to work)

rootless; vagabond (wandering aimlessly without ties to a place or community)

unlocated (lacking a particular location)

Antonym:

settled (established in a desired position or place; not moving about)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Subject to change

Synonyms:

changeable; uncertain; unsettled

Context example:

unsettled weather with rain and hail and sunshine coming one right after the other

Similar:

variable (liable to or capable of change)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Not yet settled

Context example:

unsettled territory

Similar:

uninhabited (not having inhabitants; not lived in)

 Context examples 

He is not very forgiving: he broke with his family, and now for many years he has led an unsettled kind of life.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

A large party in an hotel ensured a quick-changing, unsettled scene.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

We used to be faithful about it, but since Father went away and all this war trouble unsettled us, we have neglected many things.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Nausea is an uneasy or unsettled feeling in the stomach together with an urge to vomit.

(Nausea and Vomiting, NIH)

His unsettled affections, wavering with his vanity, Maria's decided attachment, and no sufficient principle on either side, gave it possibility: Miss Crawford's letter stampt it a fact.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Their manner of living, even when the restoration of peace dismissed them to a home, was unsettled in the extreme.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

“I have not a bitter drop in my heart for mine old comrade; but the quarrel, as he hath told you, is still open and unsettled. Fall on, Aylward!”

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The fact is, we avoid mentioning the subject; and my unsettled prospects and indifferent circumstances are a great consolation to them.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

But my plan was unsettled, and I wandered many hours round the confines of the town, uncertain what path I should pursue.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

The ground covered with snow, and the atmosphere in that unsettled state between frost and thaw, which is of all others the most unfriendly for exercise, every morning beginning in rain or snow, and every evening setting in to freeze, she was for many days a most honourable prisoner.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)