Unspoken

How to spell unspoken

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce unspoken

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does unspoken mean?

1. adjectiveUnderstood or felt without being expressed in words.

Unspoken in a sentence

• There was an unspoken agreement between the partners about who handled the accounts.

• The team operated by an unspoken rule that nobody answered emails after six.

Where does unspoken come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word joins the native English prefix un-, meaning 'not', to spoken, the past participle of the verb speak. The verb speak descends from the Old English specan, an earlier variant of sprecan meaning 'to talk' or 'to utter', and it shares an ancestry with the German sprechen, which still carries the same sense. The 'r' was gradually lost from the English form during the early medieval period, leaving the leaner speak we use today. The participle spoken supplied the form for the adjective, and prefixing it with un- produced a word describing anything understood but never actually said aloud. It is a thoroughly Germanic construction, built entirely from inherited English parts rather than borrowed roots.

How the word is built

• un- (not)
• spoke (past stem of speak, from Old English specan)
• -en (past participle suffix)