unanticipated
Britishadjective
Explanation
Unanticipated means "unexpected." Finding a candy bar in your lunchbox when your mom usually packs nothing but health food would be an unanticipated delight. Just as pleasure is sweetest when unanticipated, unanticipated pain is a bitter pill. Getting laid off from a job is often unanticipated––and the fact that you're blindsided by it is often the source of most of the pain. You wonder why you didn't see it coming, and worry that other unanticipated disasters lie in wait for you.
Vocabulary lists containing unanticipated
The SAT: Words to Capture Tone, List 5
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The New SAT: Words to Capture Tone
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Flora and Ulysses
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The anthropomorphizing runs wild as they share stories of supposed “AI civilizations” that make unanticipated decisions.
From Salon ● Sep. 12, 2026
“It’s clear from experience with Waymo that these autonomous vehicles can’t deal with unanticipated circumstances, so we are certainly cautioning about the dangers of 26,000 pounds barreling down the highways at 65 miles per hour.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 29, 2026
The deficit does not include the cost of further fire preventative measures - which the report suggests "will significantly exceed the Available Sum" - or unanticipated future works due to system failures.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
The past few weeks have also seen two low-budget horror movies, “Backrooms” and “Obsession,” become unanticipated blockbusters.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 21, 2026
One unanticipated result of ending manual labor was that I began to gain weight.
From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
