UNEMPLOYED

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does unemployed mean? 

• UNEMPLOYED (noun)
  The noun UNEMPLOYED has 1 sense:

1. people who are involuntarily out of work (considered as a group)

  Familiarity information: UNEMPLOYED used as a noun is very rare.

• UNEMPLOYED (adjective)
  The adjective UNEMPLOYED has 1 sense:

1. not engaged in a gainful occupation

  Familiarity information: UNEMPLOYED used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNEMPLOYED (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

People who are involuntarily out of work (considered as a group)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

unemployed; unemployed people

Context example:

the long-term unemployed need assistance

Hypernyms ("unemployed" is a kind of...):

people ((plural) any group of human beings (men or women or children) collectively)

Domain usage:

plural; plural form (the form of a word that is used to denote more than one)

• UNEMPLOYED (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Not engaged in a gainful occupation

Context example:

unemployed workers marched on the capital

Similar:

discharged; dismissed; fired; laid-off; pink-slipped (having lost your job)

idle; jobless; out of work (not having a job)

Also:

idle (not in action or at work)

Antonym:

employed (having your services engaged for; or having a job especially one that pays wages or a salary)

 Context examples 

When I am quite determined as to the time, I am not at all afraid of being long unemployed.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

When the latter was unemployed, he sometimes walked with us to show us the boats and ships, and once or twice he took us for a row.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I first became acquainted with him on board a whale vessel; finding that he was unemployed in this city, I easily engaged him to assist in my enterprise.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Take one day; share it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes—include all; do each piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid regularity.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

She had seen too much of the world, to expect sudden or disinterested attachment anywhere, but her illness had proved to her that her landlady had a character to preserve, and would not use her ill; and she had been particularly fortunate in her nurse, as a sister of her landlady, a nurse by profession, and who had always a home in that house when unemployed, chanced to be at liberty just in time to attend her.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Depend upon it that whatever unemployed sum may remain, when I make up my accounts in the spring, I would even rather lay it uselessly by than dispose of it in a manner so painful to you.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

He had learned his part—all his parts, for he took every trifling one that could be united with the Butler, and began to be impatient to be acting; and every day thus unemployed was tending to increase his sense of the insignificance of all his parts together, and make him more ready to regret that some other play had not been chosen.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Even when I did get through the morning with tolerable credit, there was not much gained but dinner; for Miss Murdstone never could endure to see me untasked, and if I rashly made any show of being unemployed, called her brother's attention to me by saying, Clara, my dear, there's nothing like work—give your boy an exercise; which caused me to be clapped down to some new labour, there and then.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Maria, with only Mr. Rushworth to attend to her, and doomed to the repeated details of his day's sport, good or bad, his boast of his dogs, his jealousy of his neighbours, his doubts of their qualifications, and his zeal after poachers, subjects which will not find their way to female feelings without some talent on one side or some attachment on the other, had missed Mr. Crawford grievously; and Julia, unengaged and unemployed, felt all the right of missing him much more.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)