unpublished
Britishadjective
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not available in print for distribution and sale
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having no written work issued for publication
an unpublished undergraduate
Explanation
Unpublished means not made public. If your phone number is unpublished, it’s not listed in the telephone directory and you’re safe from late-night calls from long-lost boyfriends. If you’re scrounging around in an old desk drawer and stumble upon an unpublished poem by Emily Dickinson, your discovery is likely to make you famous. A painting or a piece of music can also be described as unpublished if no one has written about it or put it into some kind of form available to a wider audience. If you're an aspiring author but nothing you've written has appeared in print yet, you're an unpublished author.
Vocabulary lists containing unpublished
Talk Like Shakespeare Day, List 6
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Spelling Practice 2, Unit 6
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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.
In his resignation letter, he said the unpublished plan didn’t go far enough and would have forced him to make decisions “that left the country less safe.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 11, 2026
The team also reports that unpublished experiments found similar regenerative benefits after treatment with the chemotherapy drug 5-fluorouracil, which is commonly used against colon and pancreatic cancers but can also injure the intestinal lining.
From Science Daily • May 21, 2026
Requests for things that weren’t available — say, an unpublished “Harry Potter” manuscript, if the timing were right — really did happen at Vogue in the aughts.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 30, 2026
Think Human festival committee member Gary Browning said the Iris Murdoch Society had recently found the previously unpublished poems in the attic of her house on 30 Charlbury Road.
From BBC • Apr. 11, 2026
In 1954, they learned that the Folger Library was holding a contest for the best unpublished manuscript about Shakespeare.
From "The Woman All Spies Fear" by Amy Butler Greenfield
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.
