Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Unbeknown.
- adverb Without the knowledge of a specified party. Used with to.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Same as
unbeknown .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adverb without the
knowledge of
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective (usually used with `to') occurring or existing without the knowledge of
- adverb without someone's knowledge
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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McCain unbeknownst to Warner has indeed picked up a hot charcoal ember with his tongs, and purple with rage waits for Warner to turn back.
“Weenies” 2008
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McCain unbeknownst to Warner has indeed picked up a hot charcoal ember with his tongs, and purple with rage waits for Warner to turn back.
Archive 2008-04-01 2008
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With no bomb-shell of an October surprise namely a tape coming from Osama bin Laden as was done in the 2004 presidential campaign; a self-inflicted November surprise came about today when Sarah Palin took an active part in a prank phone call unbeknownst to her.
Sarah Palin and the prank call: The GOP's self-inflicted November surprise 2008
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P.S. When I hear the word unbeknownst, all I think about is Jeff Conway and Daniel Baldwin's confrontation where Daniel said "unbeknownst to Jeff ...." and Jeff just kept screaming "no I fucking did not, take it back".
radioactive girl 2008
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I know a Japanese woman whose name unbeknownst to her happened to be the same as that of a wanted member of the Japanese "Red Army".
Can you spot the errors in this picture? Harry Haddock 2009
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How could Paulsons opinions and predilections about subprime RMBS have been "unbeknownst" to ACA at the time?
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How could Paulsons opinions and predilections about subprime RMBS have been "unbeknownst" to ACA at the time?
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I hate doing anything of the kind "unbeknownst" to people, so there is the exact history of my proceedings.
The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Huxley, Leonard 1900
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Fitzgerald, Squire Terence Malone, and the other squires of the neighborhood had many a good smoke there, and many a hearty laugh, as they said, quite "unbeknownst" to the English lady and her grand friends.
Light O' the Morning L. T. Meade 1884
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We popped on each seal-island "unbeknownst," and what we discovered we held our jaws on.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 Various 1876
bilby commented on the word unbeknownst
"Stop for a minute and consider what Bush actually told us. It's a staggering thought. Who even knows what it might mean? In the United States, for example, the unemployment rate in the decade of the Great Depression never fell below 14%. In cities like Chicago and Detroit in the early 1930s, it approached 50%. So, worse than that? And yet in the privacy of the Oval Office, that was evidently a majority view, unbeknownst to the rest of us."
- Tom Engelhardt, 'The Day the Earth Still Stood:
What Will Obama Inherit?', tomdispatch.com, 20 January 2009.
January 21, 2009