English Dictionary |
UNPREPARED
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Dictionary entry overview: What does unprepared mean?
• UNPREPARED (adjective)
The adjective UNPREPARED has 1 sense:
1. without preparation; not prepared for
Familiarity information: UNPREPARED used as an adjective is very rare.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
Without preparation; not prepared for
Context example:
our treaty makers approached their immensely difficult problems unprepared
Similar:
ad-lib; extemporaneous; extemporary; extempore; impromptu; off-the-cuff; offhand; offhanded; unrehearsed (with little or no preparation or forethought)
spur-of-the-moment (in response to an unforeseen need)
Also:
unready (not prepared or in a state of readiness; slow to understand or respond)
Antonym:
prepared (made ready or fit or suitable beforehand)
Context examples
But, dear Fanny, you must allow that you were not so absolutely unprepared to have the question asked as your cousin fancies.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Mr. Peggotty had made a communication to me on the way to London for which I was not unprepared.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
So great and unprepared a change pointed to madness; but in view of Lanyon’s manner and words, there must lie for it some deeper ground.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
He seems perfectly unprepared for that.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Show them the way, Negore, even as Old Kinoos showed them the way, so that they come, unprepared, to where we wait for them, in a passage up the rocks.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
His ignorant and unprepared attempts at philosophy had been fruitless.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Of course, my philosophy had always recognized the inevitableness of the love-call sooner or later; but long years of bookish silence had made me inattentive and unprepared.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
Thanks to it, I was able to meet subsequent occurrences with a decent calm, which, had they found me unprepared, I should probably have been unequal to maintain, even externally.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
I was not unprepared for this request, for I had noticed how his pets went on increasing in size and vivacity, but I did not care that his pretty family of tame sparrows should be wiped out in the same manner as the flies and the spiders; so I said I would see about it, and asked him if he would not rather have a cat than a kitten.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
This was a stroke of civility for which she was quite unprepared; and she could hardly suppress a smile at his being now seeking the acquaintance of some of those very people against whom his pride had revolted in his offer to herself.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
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