uncertainest
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Senses: examples: text: Vpon theſe concluſions, Priſceria all abaſhed, ſhaking of the drowſineſſe of her dreaming, made aunſwere to Solduuius in theſe tearmes. / Theſe ſtraunge ſuppoſitions, my good Father, argue the ſlender opinion of your ſelf, who by the vncertaineſt ſigns yᵗ may be, confirme your opinion as you pleaſe.
ref: 1584, Thomas Lodge, “The Delectable Historie of Forbonius and Prisceria”, in The Complete Works of Thomas Lodge [1580-1623?] Now First Collected, volume first, [Glasgow]: […] [T]he Hunterian Club, published 1883, folio 27, verso, page 66:
text: […] there is no creature in the world that is to be handled with more art, then man is: And Father Nazianzen, he cries out, ars artium est, & scientia scientiarum, &c. it is an art of all arts, and a knowledge of all knowledges, to be able to governe a man: he is the most various, and the most uncertainest of all things in the world, and therefore he ought to be much in prayer to God.
ref: 1644 September 28, Anthony Burgesse, The Magistrates Commission from Heaven. Declared in a Sermon Preached in Laurence Jury, London, the 28. Day of Sept. 1644. at the Election of the Lord Major., London: […] George Miller for Thomas Underhill […], page 13; republished in Early English Books Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Text Creation Partnership, p. 2011:
text: Others of the like mould, dividing as it were by contract, and suiting their affections, as the father to the one, the son to the other side, so the one is to be a saver by the bargain, let the victory fall out which way it will: This is the easiest and uncertain∣est way of Policy, if there be any who practice it; […]
ref: 1646 July 1, [William Stafford], The Reason of the War, with the Progress and Accidents Thereof. Written by an English Subject. […], London: […] Iohn Field, […], pages 69–70; republished in Early English Books Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Text Creation Partnership, p. 2011:
text: Who can draw a strait and certain line by a crook∣ed and uncertain rule! / I am unwilling to speak of absolute and unlimited Governours or Governments, nor shall I dispute which is best, fetching arguments from this or that, or the other convenience or inconvenience which perhaps may be, and perhaps may never be, in which there is the greatest and uncertainest of varieties that can be imagined; that is not mans work, but to fear the Lord, and do the thing that is right and just, and that justly and rightly too, as to the way also, for the way and the end must be one, both just, and justly done: this is mans center and resting place, from which he may not move nor be moved lest he die.
ref: 1653, Robert Norwood, A Pathway unto England’s Perfect Settlement; and Its Centre and Foundation of Rest and Peace, Discovered by Capt. Robert Norwood. […], London: […] Rich[ard] Moone, […], page 12; republished in Early English Books Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Text Creation Partnership, p. 2011:
text: Practice is the beſt part of Phyſick, Obſervation the ſureſt, and the Theory of the Ancients, the uncertaineſt and emptieſt.
ref: 1680, Robert Couch, “To all Ingenious Students and Practitioners in Physick and Chyrurgery”, in Praxis Catholica: or, The Countryman’s Universal Remedy: Wherein Is Plainly and Briefly Laid Down the Nature, Matter, Manner, Place and Cure of Most Diseases, Incident to the Body of Man; […], London: […] Robert Harford, […], signature a, recto:
text: But you may take this for a general Rule, That thoſe Trades which ask moſt with an Apprentice, are uncertaineſt of Thriving, and require the greateſt Stocks to ſet up.
ref: 1682, “The way to Promotion by Trade”, in The Way to Promotion. Or, The Young Man’s Guide to Preferment; Either by the Ministry, Civil or Common Law, Physick, Court, Trade, Navigation, Husbandry, Soldiery. […], London: […] Francis Haley, […], →OCLC, page 81:
text: “Robert,” said I, “give me that top paper—there, that one—the first you lay your hands on. That is it.” / “This here?” said Robert; “why, this is the most difficult-to-be-decipheredest of ’em all!” / “Never mind,” said I; “leave the paper and the room.” / “Ay,” said Robert, “hit or miss—luck ’s all. It is the most uncertainest thing as is.” / “What is so uncertain?” I inquired. / “Why, whether you tells a tale as will tell, or whether you don’t,” said Robert, as he closed the door.
ref: 1843, J[oseph Thomas James] Hewlett, chapter III, in College Life; or, The Proctor’s Note-Book. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], pages 105–106:
text: Our brigade will get to this place this evening if nothing happens, but to be in the army is one of the uncertainest places a man ever was, for one minute you have one thing and the next another way, so I can’t say anything as to what will be our movements now.
ref: 1863 July 15, John Simmons, letter to Nancy Simmons; quoted in Wood County Historical Commission, “Notable Sons and Daughters”, in Wood County (Images of America), Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2004, →ISBN, page 103:
text: I remember when he wouldn’t let her put her own shawl on, or carry a bag just big enough for her handkerchief, which, I tell Jinny, if I have seen one such case I have seen twenty-five, for husbands and wives are both the uncertainest property; […]
ref: 1869 November 13, “Goose and Gander”, in Harper’s Bazar. A Repository of Fashion, Pleasure, and Instruction., volume II, number 46, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, page 730, column 2:
text: Consider, O ye brother pilgrims through the vale past forty, what a bore it is to assist at a set dinner! What an infliction to attend at a soiree from time to time during the season! But to get up, give and preside at a dinner and a soiree on the same evening, all that three times a week—and at fifteen miles distant from what Mr. Tingley would call your “residential home”—whence you must come by early afternoon and whither you must return to sleep by midnight train!—you and Mrs. Jones—you aged seventy-five, and running, if I may so express myself, all the while a curiously ramshackle government-machine as responsible engineer, with a thirty-six million full passenger train on the uncertainest kind of track—subconductors and brakemen and switchmen not to be sworn by—likely to be misled or thrown off the track by false Orleans blue lights, and Republican red lights, and Legitimist white lights, and false, lurid Imperial purple lights!
ref: 1872 April 15, M. D. Conway, “Republican Paris. George Sand’s New Novel.—Forthcoming Works.—Thiers and His Receptions.—Dining and Wining at Seventy-Six, and Running a Nation Besides.”, in The Commonwealth: A Journal of Politics, Literature, Art and News, volume X, number 40 (whole 509), Boston, Mass.: Cha[rle]s W[esley] Slack & Son, published 1 June 1872, front page, column 7:
text: Barrow digging is something like bottom fishing. There is plenty of fun and excitement when you are fairly in for a good thing, when every moment something is turned up, and you bless the generous mourners who have left so much for you to rejoice over. But when work is hard and results small, you lie down and smoke your pipe and watch your comrades, and begin to think profanely of the memory of the Prehistoric niggards. And as bone-hunting is the uncertainest lottery that ever was, your state of mind is variable.
ref: 1877, Rooke Pennington, “The Prehistoric Ages”, in Notes on the Barrows and Bone-Caves of Derbyshire. With an Account of a Descent into Elden Hole., London: Macmillan and Co., page 13:
text: Mrs Dawes only had her attention free for the hops. / ‘Oh, they look well enough now,’ she observed, with a sigh of relief when the end of the last field was reached. / ‘But ’ops is the uncertainest things, you never can tell when they’re safe.[…]’
ref: 1884, Edith L[axon] Chamberlain, “The Mother-in-Law”, in Up Hill and Down Dale: A Tale of Country Life […], volume II, London: Remington & Co., […], →OCLC, page 105:
text: LIKE the love-bringing wind when it goes / To the deep-crimson heart of the rose, / Like the beauty that, languishing, lies / In the arms of the day when he dies, / Like mist at the morning’s feet, / Distant music, transcendently sweet,— / Like these is the muse, but warier far, / And hers the uncertainest lovers that are.
ref: 1887, John Vance Cheney, “What the Muse Is Like”, in Thistle-Drift, New York, N.Y.: Frederick A[bbott] Stokes […], page 13:
text: A well-known military man was caught in Chemung county the other night with another man’s skip of bees in his wagon. Bees are the uncertainest of all small creatures; but if this military man had been armed he might have saved himself the invasion and things wouldn’t have been as swarm for him as they are now.
ref: 1887 November 19, “Hum of the Court”, in I[saac] M[erritt] Gregory, editor, Judge, volume 13, number 318, New York, N.Y.: The Judge Publishing Company […], page 4, columns 1–2:
text: And now, in the midst of them, lies a prospect of competent retirement and, at the end of them all, a philosophy of Consumption and a nervousness about the life of my present wife—a life that has been useful and is wanted for greater purposes yet. And yet, and yet my heart fails at the idea that her life is uncertainest at this very moment—that my life is a whim—that my old parents are likely to close their old age—and that the future of my children hangs in the air! Wife has been ill for a month: fever, hysteria and cough, and what not?
ref: 1892 December 3, Govardhanrám Madhavrám Tripáthi, edited by Kantilal C[hhaganlal] Pandya, Ramprasad P[remshankar] Bakshi, and Sanmukhlal J[averbhai] Pandya, Govardhanrám Madhavrám Tripáthi’s Scrap Book, 1888-1894, Bombay: N. M. Tripathi Pr. Ltd. […], published 1959, volume III (1891-1893), page 155:
text: Lived on the Missouri twenty-one years, and I lowed that was the blamedest, uncertainest stream of water in creation. Always changin’ its bed. Go to bed at night with it peacefully rollin’ its muddy waters two miles south of my farm, and me a citizen of Ray County. Wake up next morning and find it runnin’ in a new bed three miles to the north, leavin’ me a citizen of Jackson County.
ref: 1897 March 7, “The Inconstant East River”, in Charles H[enry] Jones, editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, volume 48, number 210, St. Louis, Mo.: The Pulitzer Publishing Co., page 30, column 3:
text: This yer love is one of the uncertainest things that can happen to a man. It’s like small-pox among the Indians; they hain’t got a symptom of it one day, then it catches them the next and spreads all over ’em till they’ve got it bad from head to foot, and if they don’t get cured slick it takes ’em off by the dozen, just like pizened corn strewn among rats.
ref: 1898, Ernest R[ichard] Suffling, “[Josh Ingham: Trapper.] The Story as Told to Me.”, in The Decameron of a Hypnotist (Fiction Library), London: L[eonard] Upcott Gill, […], pages 40–41:
text: An’ ye’re actoolly cryin’ like a baby. If women ain’t the uncertainest creatures, anyhow! Laws o’ massy, I thort ye’d be tickled ter death!
ref: 1903 December, Elizabeth Cherry Waltz, “The Mystery Play”, in Current Literature: A Magazine of Record and Review, volume XXXV, number 6, New York, N.Y.: The Current Literature Publishing Co. […], page 671, column 2:
text: Tambo: Say, Mistah Bones, what am de three most uncertainest things in de world?” / Bones: Ah dunno, Mistah Tambo. What am de three most uncertainest things in de world? / Bones: A woman an’ two other women.
ref: 1908 November 13, “Very Unreliable”, in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, volume 61, number 85, St. Louis, Mo.: [T]he Pulitzer Publishing Co., page 11, column 3:
text: “Now, suppose a man loves a certain woman—” / “There ain’t no such thing. They’re the uncertainest critters there is.”
ref: 1909 March 1, “Meant to Be Funny”, in Duluth Evening Herald, Duluth, Minn.: The Herald Company, page 6, column 6:
text: Chickens are the most dad-busted, uncertainest creatures that walk the family acre. […] Merchant, banker, broker, farmer, city man, commuter—almost everybody tries to raise chickens at some time or another. Looks easy, that ’s the deceiving part of it.
ref: 1912 July 17, Robert C[lark] McElravy, “Chickens”, in Puck, volume LXXI, number 1846, New York, N.Y.: Keppler & Schwarzmann, column 1:
text: Yo’ is de mos’ uncertainest man / Dat I eber seed in my life. / I feared I’se made a monstrous mistake / ’Ceptin’ myself as yo’ wife.
ref: 1932, Mazie Earhart Clark, “[Garden of Memories] The Race Track Romance”, in Voices in the Poetic Tradition (African-American Women Writers, 1910–1940), New York, N.Y.: G. K. Hall & Co.; London: Prentice Hall International, published 1996, →ISBN, [https://archive.org/details/voicesinpoetictr0000thom/page/243/mode/1up page 59 [243]]:
text: “Of course, I want my commission, Mr. Acland, that’s how I earn my living. But my advice to you is to sell. You’re sure of making a profit now, and this is an uncertain world.” / “Well, you’re right there; it is the uncertainest kind of a world: ain’t I been in it long enough to know? But which of ’em will I sell to?”
ref: 1933, John Beames, chapter IX, in Duke, London: Ernest Benn Limited, page 148:
text: ‘I reckon I’ll go back and try crossing Brahmas with Herefords,’ Morg said slowly. ‘Since the days when old Shanghai Pierce started that cross on the Texas Gulf Coast, and the critters spent half their time in the water, and Shanghai named ’em “sea lions,” they do say that Brahmas are the uncertainest, the aggravatin’est animals on the face of God’s round earth! You start monkeying with Brahmas and they’ll keep your hands fuller and your mind farther from other troubles than anything else alive⸺’
ref: 1935, Eugene Cunningham, “‘⸺ Rose dawn’”, in Trail of the Macaw: Soldiers of Fortune in Banana Land, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company; Cambridge, Mass.: The Riverside Press, page 273:
text: Well, a man is nothing but trouble as I sees it and of all the uncertain things marriage is the uncertainest, but what else is there for a woman in this world?
ref: 1936, L[ucy] M[aud] Montgomery, “The First Year”, in Anne of Windy Poplars, New York, N.Y.: Frederick A[bbott] Stokes Company, page 122:
text: That Estrella’s just about the uncertainest proposition ever I put eyes on! No telling what she’ll do, next.
ref: 1938, Eugene Cunningham, Texas Triggers (A Large Print Western), Bath, Somerset: Chivers Press; Thorndike, Me.: G.K. Hall & Co., published 1998, →ISBN, page 203:
text: Why dick around with the game of politics, that uncertainest and most unpredictable of all human pastimes?
ref: 1972 September, Don Pendleton, “The Question to the Answer”, in Washington I.O.U. (The Executioner; 13), New York, N.Y.: Pinnacle Books, page 148:
text: Behind the serene facade of the White House, President Welby was reportedly resting, still trying to decide who should become his new Vice President. For him, for the moneyed, for anyone who owned anything at all of value, the fall of 1981 was rapidly shaping up as the uncertainest season of them all.
ref: 1977, David [McCord] Lippincott, “Prologue”, in The Blood of October, London: W. H. Allen, published 1978, →ISBN, page 3:
text: Some of these here beaver trappers are the most uncertainest fellers ever—cuz they’ll argeefie about near anything. And that even includes argeein’ about argeein’!
ref: 1996 November, Terry C[onrad] Johnston, chapter 12, in Buffalo Palace, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, →ISBN, page 211:
text: On the other hand, the “hero” of “The Memphis Maybe Man” (Jerome H. Remick, 1923), with words and music by Haven Gillespie, Charles L. Cooke, and Billy Moll, is suave, cool, a classy dresser, slick to the point of being oily, vacillating—and seemingly white; in brief, the “most uncertainest he-vamp in the land.”
ref: 2015, John Bush Jones, “Typecasting—Southern Social and Ethnic, That Is”, in Reinventing Dixie: Tin Pan Alley’s Songs and the Creation of the Mythic South, Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, →ISBN, page 85:
glosses: superlative form of uncertain: most uncertain