unfledged
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ʌnˈflɛd͡ʒd/
Etymology: From un- + fledged.
Senses: examples: text: […] we, poor unfledged,
Have never wing’d from view o’ the nest, nor know not
What air’s from home.
ref: 1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iii]:
text: “The little Durands were there, I conclude,” said she, “with their mouths open to catch the music, like unfledged sparrows ready to be fed. They never miss a concert.”
ref: 1817 (date written), [Jane Austen], Persuasion; published in Northanger Abbey: And Persuasion. […], volume (please specify |volume=III or IV), London: John Murray, […], 20 December 1817 (indicated as 1818), →OCLC:
text: The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.
ref: 1854, Henry David Thoreau, “The Bean-Field”, in Walden:
text: “Boy and girl. Aren’t they beauties?” said the proud papa, beaming upon the little red squirmers as if they were unfledged angels.
ref: 1869, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, chapter 28, in Little Women: […], 2nd part, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, →OCLC:
synonyms: featherless
callow
antonyms: fledged
glosses: Not having feathers; (of a bird) not yet having developed its wings and feathers and become able to fly.
examples: text: Temptations have since then been born to’s; for
In those unfledged days was my wife a girl;
Your precious self had then not cross’d the eyes
Of my young play-fellow.
ref: c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:
text: Besides, it is not possible to give a young person a just view of life; he must have struggled with his own passions before he can estimate the force of the temptation which betrayed his brother into vice. Those who are entering life, and those who are departing, see the world from such very different points of view, that they can seldom think alike, unless the unfledged reason of the former never attempted a solitary flight.
ref: 1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], published 1792, →OCLC:
text: Yet they who watch your God-compelled return
May see your happy perihelion burn<
Where the calm sun his unfledged planets broods.
ref: 1848, James Russell Lowell, “Si Descendero in Infernum, Ades”, in Poems. Second Series, Cambridge: G. Nichols, page 38:
text: Fantasy, sheer fantasy? Perhaps! But when we think of time and of eternity, intelligence reels. The shrewdest questions that we can ask about them are perhaps falsely shaped, being but flutterings of the still unfledged human mentality.
ref: 1946, Olaf Stapledon, chapter 4, in Death into Life:
glosses: Not yet fully grown or developed; not yet mature.
examples: text: He had long since determined that Magdaléna should marry no one of the sons of his moneyed friends, nor yet any of the sprouting lawyers or unfledged business youths who made up the masculine half of the younger fashionable set.
ref: 1898, Gertrude Atherton, The Californians, Book I, Chapter 23:
text: Aunt Jamesina had a proper respect for the cloth even in the case of an unfledged parson.
ref: 1915, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 37, in Anne of the Island:
antonyms: experienced
glosses: Inexperienced, like a tyro or novice.
Derived terms: unfledgedness