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UNSETTLED
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Not yet settled
Example:
unsettled territory
Classified under:
Similar:
uninhabited (not having inhabitants; not lived in)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Not settled or established
Example:
an unsettled lifestyle
Classified under:
Similar:
aimless; drifting; floating; vagabond; vagrant (continually changing especially as from one abode or occupation to another)
erratic; planetary; wandering (having no fixed course)
homeless; stateless (without nationality or citizenship)
migrant; migratory (habitually moving from place to place especially in search of seasonal work)
mobile; nomadic; peregrine; roving; wandering (migratory)
peripatetic; wayfaring (traveling especially on foot)
itinerant (traveling from place to place to work)
rootless; vagabond (wandering aimlessly without ties to a place or community)
unlocated (lacking a particular location)
Antonym:
settled (established in a desired position or place; not moving about)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Still in doubt
Example:
an unsettled state of mind
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
doubtful; tentative (unsettled in mind or opinion)
open; undecided; undetermined; unresolved (not brought to a conclusion; subject to further thought)
Antonym:
settled (established or decided beyond dispute or doubt)
Sense 4
Meaning:
Subject to change
Example:
unsettled weather with rain and hail and sunshine coming one right after the other
Synonyms:
changeable; uncertain; unsettled
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
variable (liable to or capable of change)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Past simple / past participle of the verb unsettle
Context examples:
Catherine's feelings, as she got into the carriage, were in a very unsettled state; divided between regret for the loss of one great pleasure, and the hope of soon enjoying another, almost its equal in degree, however unlike in kind.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
No. If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects, yet unsettled—my departure, continually procrastinated.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Now, Mr. Bhaer was a diffident man and slow to offer his own opinions, not because they were unsettled, but too sincere and earnest to be lightly spoken.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
“It is to his credit,” was Edmund's answer; “and I dare say it gives his sister pleasure. She does not like his unsettled habits.”
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
She had been unwilling to mention Bingley; and the unsettled state of her own feelings had made her equally avoid the name of his friend.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
I feel in a misty and unsettled kind of state; as if I had got up very early in the morning a week or two ago, and had never been to bed since.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
But I liked his physiognomy even less than before: it struck me as being at the same time unsettled and inanimate.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
The days kept getting longer and longer, the weather was unusually variable and so were tempers; an unsettled feeling possessed everyone, and Satan found plenty of mischief for the idle hands to do.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
She was yet more impatient for another letter from town after receiving this than she had been before; and for a few days was so unsettled by it altogether, by what had come, and what might come, that her usual readings and conversation with Susan were much suspended.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
The vague and unsettled suspicions which uncertainty had produced of what Mr. Darcy might have been doing to forward her sister's match, which she had feared to encourage as an exertion of goodness too great to be probable, and at the same time dreaded to be just, from the pain of obligation, were proved beyond their greatest extent to be true!
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
