unscheduled
Britishadjective
Explanation
Something unscheduled is not planned for or anticipated. If your mother shows up at your door unscheduled, hope that you've been keeping the place nice and clean since you won't have time to tidy up before her arrival. The word unscheduled describes something that is not planned or scheduled in advance, as seen by the prefix un- meaning "not." An unscheduled interruption of a television program might mean there's breaking news that you need to hear. An unscheduled delay of a flight might mean you're stuck in the airport for hours. Whatever it may be, something that's unscheduled happens without your expecting it, which means it might very well throw you off your regular routine or schedule.
Vocabulary lists containing unscheduled
100 SAT Words Beginning with "U"
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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.
Passengers and staff were injured on the 18:25 Doncaster-London service on 1 November after it left Peterborough, causing it to make an unscheduled stop at Huntingdon railway station.
From BBC ● Oct. 19, 2026
Activity was up strongly in the oil sands sector of Western Canada following longer-than-anticipated unscheduled maintenance that had tempered growth through the first three months of the year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
Musk justified the "rapid unscheduled disassembly" of these rockets, to use the entrepreneur's favorite euphemism for explosions, by saying they were part of the learning process.
From Barron's ● Jun. 12, 2026
When you’re a kid, it arrives all at once: the last school bell, the first trip to the pool, the permission slip feeling of a completely unscheduled Tuesday.
From Salon ● Jun. 9, 2026
“It was an unscheduled landing, completely unexpected. Depending on who you believe, either the radar was out of order briefly while it was landing—or it just appeared. Out of nowhere.”
From "Found" by Margaret Peterson Haddix
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
