UNHEARD-OF

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does unheard-of mean? 

• UNHEARD-OF (adjective)
  The adjective UNHEARD-OF has 1 sense:

1. previously unknown

  Familiarity information: UNHEARD-OF used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNHEARD-OF (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Previously unknown

Context example:

developments on an unheard-of scale

Similar:

unknown (not known)

 Context examples 

It is the most unheard-of business.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They are, Miss Eyre, though they absolutely require a new statute: unheard-of combinations of circumstances demand unheard-of rules.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It is therefore surprising that catalysis, which is known to be so useful in so many fields, is practically unheard-of in oncology.

(Scientists successfully deliver “Trojan horse” catalysts into cancerous tumour cells to destroy them from within, Universities of Granada)

When we got outside the door, Peggotty informed me that Mr. Barkis, being now a little nearer than he used to be, always resorted to this same device before producing a single coin from his store; and that he endured unheard-of agonies in crawling out of bed alone, and taking it from that unlucky box.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

That a man should lie in wait for and follow a very handsome woman is no unheard-of thing, and if he has so little audacity that he not only dared not address her, but even fled from her approach, he was not a very formidable assailant.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Felix soon learned that the treacherous Turk, for whom he and his family endured such unheard-of oppression, on discovering that his deliverer was thus reduced to poverty and ruin, became a traitor to good feeling and honour and had quitted Italy with his daughter, insultingly sending Felix a pittance of money to aid him, as he said, in some plan of future maintenance.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)