Unlearned

//ʌnˈlɝnɪd// adj, verb

adj, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    simple past and past participle of unlearn (“discard the knowledge of”) form-of, participle, past
Adjective
  1. 1
    ignorant, uneducated, untaught, untrained.

    "How much do I know / To talk out of turn / You might say that I'm young / You might say I'm unlearned / But there's one thing I know / Though I'm younger than you / Even Jesus would never / Forgive what you do"

  2. 2
    Of a behavior: not learned; innate.
  3. 3
    Of information: that has not (yet) been learned; unknown.

    "Did she ever return? No, she never returned. Her fate is yet unlearned Though for years and years there were fond ones watching For the ship that never returned."

Adjective
  1. 1
    uneducated in general; lacking knowledge or sophistication wordnet
  2. 2
    not established by conditioning or learning wordnet
  3. 3
    not well learned wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
uneducatedunletteredunscholarlyunlearntautomaticbarbaric

Example

More examples

"Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English unlerned (“not taught, uneducated”). By surface analysis, un- (“not”) + learned (“educated”).

Etymology 2

From un- (“not”) + learned (“studied”), past participle of learn.

Etymology 3

From Middle English unlernyd (“obliterated from memory, forgotten”), equivalent to unlearn + -ed.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.