unwritten

[ uhn-rit-n ]

adjective

1. not actually formulated or expressed; customary; traditional.

   Synonyms: inferred, tacit, understood, implicit

2. not written; not put in writing or print; oral:

   an unwritten agreement.

3. containing no writing; blank.

unwritten

/ ʌnˈrɪtən /

adjective

1. not printed or in writing
2. effective only through custom; traditional
3. without writing upon it

Word History and Origins

Origin of unwritten¹

First recorded in 1325–75; Middle English unwriten; un- ¹, written

Example Sentences

They angst over romance, use and sell illegal substances, and struggle with the school’s complex and all-important social life and its unwritten hierarchies.

From Washington Post

The alliance, formed and honed across roughly the past month, remains unwritten.

From Washington Post

For example, confusion over unwritten rules can be an issue for autistic people.

From Time

As one of the “new” people, many have come up to me to tell me about the rules — including those that are unwritten — that govern this prison, or to explain how the prison works.

From Washington Blade

There are hints that this unwritten rule started to be more stringently enforced around the turn of the millennium.

From FiveThirtyEight

A president can do it, indulging his whims through unwritten laws and executive action.

From The Daily Beast

Since 2007, Maulvi Nazir and the Pakistani military had kept to an unwritten truce.

From The Daily Beast

That's precisely the unwritten policy every gay player has adhered to in the history of the NFL.

From The Daily Beast

And what is left is all the books and articles unwritten, the conversations left unspoken.

From The Daily Beast

He chose an unlikely and pretty much unwritten-about place, the dry, flat expanses of eastern Montana.

From The Daily Beast

It is much to be regretted that we are thus deprived of that unwritten chapter of her life.

From Project Gutenberg

The baby ably impersonates Society with all its sentiments and laws, written and unwritten.

From Project Gutenberg

Both Indians and white men respected the unwritten law which held the theft of food in such a region to be worthy of death.

From Project Gutenberg

But an unreliable boy at our school matched this history from the unwritten archives of his vulgar relatives.

From Project Gutenberg

It is the unwritten law of all our public life, and the same holds true of America, that an honest open scandal ends a career.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• accepted
• tacit
• verbal