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Synonyms

unpublished

British  
/ ˌʌnˈpʌblɪʃt /

adjective

  1. not available in print for distribution and sale

  2. having no written work issued for publication

    an unpublished undergraduate

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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Unpublished means not made public. If your phone number is unpublished, it’s not listed in the telephone directory and you’re safe from late-night calls from long-lost boyfriends. If you’re scrounging around in an old desk drawer and stumble upon an unpublished poem by Emily Dickinson, your discovery is likely to make you famous. A painting or a piece of music can also be described as unpublished if no one has written about it or put it into some kind of form available to a wider audience. If you're an aspiring author but nothing you've written has appeared in print yet, you're an unpublished author.

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Vocabulary lists containing unpublished

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.

See Examples For:

Early inspiration for the movie came from an unpublished play written by poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was executed by fascist forces at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

From Barron's ● Oct. 24, 2026

Before the landmark proof even appeared online, social media blew up with suspicion that OpenAI’s model had taken the groundbreaking, unpublished work of humans, which the company denies.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 12, 2026

In the new research, Pryce's Buoy, which was previously unpublished, has been printed in full, with Dillon believing he wrote it in late 1952 or early 1953.

From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026

The BEA previously derived its legal data from an unpublished survey in the consumer-price index that had an unusually small sample size.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 22, 2026

This and his unpublished comments in support of Copernicanism began to draw criticism of Galileo.

From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin

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