Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adverb & adjective With one's identity disguised or concealed. Used of a woman.
  • noun A woman or girl whose identity is disguised or concealed.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Unknown or disguised: said of a woman or a girl.
  • noun A woman unknown or disguised.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A woman who is unknown or in disguise.
  • noun The state of being in disguise; -- said of a woman.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A woman who is unknown or in disguise.
  • noun of a woman The state of being in disguise.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Italian, feminine of incognito, incognito; see incognito.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

See incognito.

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Examples

  • My entire island of Terra incognita is an online 3D environment based on Reg Revans style Action Learning.

    Archive 2007-06-10 Milosun Czervik 2007

  • Within these limits, however, empty spaces were not terra incognita, which is what some scholars have assumed the blanks on colonial maps represented; they were not perilous "margins and thresholds," "reminders of the failure of knowledge and hence the tenuousness of possession."

    Where Women Make History: Gendered Tellings of Community and Change in Magude, Mozambique 2005

  • Ever since I have studied women, my incognita is the only one whose virginal bosom, whose ardent and voluptuous forms, have realized for me the only woman of my dreams

    The Thirteen Honor�� de Balzac 1824

  • Ah, my dear fellow, speaking physically, my incognita is the most adorable feminine person whom I ever met.

    The Girl with the Golden Eyes Honor�� de Balzac 1824

  • Ever since I have studied women, my incognita is the only one whose virginal bosom, whose ardent and voluptuous forms, have realized for me the only woman of my dreams

    The Girl with the Golden Eyes Honor�� de Balzac 1824

  • Ah, my dear fellow, speaking physically, my incognita is the most adorable feminine person whom I ever met.

    The Thirteen Honor�� de Balzac 1824

  • a zone of shadow, a terra incognita, which is clearly visible in its minutest details to all those who inhabit it with him, but is darkest night and nothingness to those who may not penetrate it but touch its fringe without the least suspicion of its existence in their midst.

    Within a Budding Grove 2003

  • You derive your respectable parentage, if I am not greatly mistaken, from a land which has afforded much pleasure, as well as profit, to those who have traded to it successfully, — I mean that part of the terra incognita which is called the province of Utopia.

    The Monastery 2008

  • Alaska is _terra incognito_ [_unchanged: error for "incognita" _]

    Golden Days for Boys and Girls Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 Various

  • In terra incognita, I might be somebody altogether different.

    Apology of a Madman 2009

Comments

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  • In addition, incognita (inˈcognita) means unknown things or places (OED).

    August 12, 2012