Unidentified

How to spell unidentified

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce unidentified

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does unidentified mean?

1. adjectiveNot recognised, named, or established; whose identity remains unknown.

Unidentified in a sentence

• The museum labelled an unidentified insect specimen in the display case.

• Radar tracked an unidentified aircraft over the coast.

Where does unidentified come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This adjective is built from the verb identify with the negative prefix un-, meaning 'not'. Identify itself comes from the Late Latin identificare, 'to make the same', formed from identitas, 'sameness', which traces back to the simple Latin word idem, meaning 'the same'. English borrowed identify in the early 1600s in the sense of treating two things as one and the same, and from there it grew the modern meaning of recognising or naming what something is. The negative form unidentified became common in scientific, military, and police contexts where something is observed but not yet named, most famously in the phrase 'unidentified flying object'. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: the -enti- sequence is easy to slur, and writers must remember the -fied ending mirrors the -fy of identify with its y turned to i.

How the word is built

• un- (not)
• ident- (from Latin idem: the same)
• -ify (to make)
• -ied (past participle ending)