unfledged
Part of speech: adj
Morphological type: derivation
Etymology: From un- (suffix meaning ‘not’) + fledged (“furnished with feathers or wings”, adjective).
Base: fledged
Affixes: un-
Inflected forms:
Senses:
gloss: Not having feathers.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
examples: Ambition is firſt Miniſter of State; / Love's but a ſecond in the Cabinet; / nor can he feather there his unfledg'd Shaft / But from Ambition's VVing: […]
This knave, […] shoes horses better than e'er a man betwixt us and Iceland; and so he gives up his practice on the bipeds, the two-legged and unfledged species, called mankind, and betakes him entirely to shoeing of horses.
gloss: Not having feathers.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
examples: [W]e poore vnfledg'd / Haue never vving'd from vievv o' th'neſt; nor knovves^([sic – meaning know]) not / VVhat Ayre's from home.
[T]his ſuperannuated Beldame gapes for Flattery, like a Neſt of unfledged Crovvs for Food; and vvith them too, gulps dovvn every Thing that's offer'd her—no matter hovv Coarſe; […]
"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."
"Ay, but thou must whistle louder than an unfledged owzle," said the boy, as Tressilian, having laid down his money, and half ashamed of the folly he practised, made a careless whistle—"You must whistle louder than that, for who knows where the smith is that you call for?—He may be in the King of France's stables for what I know."
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.
"Boy and girl. Aren’t they beauties?" said the proud papa, beaming upon the little red squirmers as if they were unfledged angels.
gloss: Of a person: not yet fully grown or mature; lacking experience, like a novice or tyro; immature, inexperienced; hence, of or relating to youth.
pos: adj
tags: figuratively
not-comparable
examples: But do not dull the palme vvith entertaine, / Of euery nevv vnfledg'd courage, […]
Temptations haue ſince then been born to's: for / In thoſe vnfledg'd dayes, vvas my VVife a Girle; / Your precious ſelfe had then not croſs'd the eyes / Of my young Play-fellovv.
I have not yet heard any further particulars, which are to be observed in this society of unfledged statesmen; but I must confess, had I a son of five-and-twenty, that should take it into his head at that age to set up for a politician, I think I should go near to disinherit him for a blockhead.
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.
Aunt Jamesina had a proper respect for the cloth even in the case of an unfledged parson.
gloss: Of a thing: not yet fully developed; imperfect, incomplete, unfinished.
pos: adj
tags: figuratively
not-comparable
examples: Beſides, it is not poſſible to give a young perſon a juſt vievv of life; he muſt have ſtruggled vvith his ovvn paſſions before he can eſtimate the force of the temptation vvhich betrayed his brother into vice. Thoſe vvho are entering life, and those vvho are departing, ſee the vvorld from ſuch very different points of vievv, that they can ſeldom think alike, unleſs the unfledged reaſon of the former never attempted a ſolitary flight.
Yet they who watch your God-compelled return / May see your happy perihelion burn / Where the calm sun his unfledged planets broods.
Alas, poor people, of an unfledged will / Most fitly expressed by such a callow voice!
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.
Derived words: unfledgedness
Translations:
lang: Finnish
word: höyhenetön
lang: German
word: ungefiedert