Uncharted

How to spell uncharted

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce uncharted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does uncharted mean?

1. adjectiveNot mapped, recorded, or previously explored; without an established guide or precedent.

Uncharted in a sentence

• The expedition pushed into uncharted regions of the rainforest.

• Launching the start-up felt like sailing into uncharted waters.

Where does uncharted come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built on 'chart', which English took in the 1500s from the Latin charta, meaning a leaf of papyrus or a sheet of paper, by way of the French carte. A chart began as a written sheet and soon came to mean a navigational map of coastlines and seas, the kind a ship's captain consulted before sailing. Adding the native English prefix 'un-' (meaning 'not') and the suffix '-ed' produced an adjective describing waters that no map yet covered, that is, places not yet drawn on any chart. The figurative sense, meaning any situation or experience without a guide, grew naturally out of that seafaring image. The same Latin charta also gave us 'card' and 'cartography', so the spelling trap is simply remembering the silent 't' and the single 'r' inside chart.

How the word is built

• un- (not)
• chart (map, from Latin charta 'papyrus, paper')
• -ed (adjective suffix)