unprecedented
adjective
Simple meaning
Never known, experienced, or done before.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
uhnprehsihdentidSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ənpˈɹɛsɪdɛntɪd
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Never before seen, done, or experienced; without precedent.
Understand the Word
How this word is built, and what each part adds.
The base word precedent means an earlier example, so unprecedented means there is no earlier example of it.
- un-
- not, or without
- precedent
- an earlier event used as an example
Prefix function , Not — expresses absence of the quality
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Never before seen, done, or experienced; without precedent.
Used this way, unprecedented is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.