Unwanted

How to spell unwanted

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce unwanted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does unwanted mean?

1. adjectiveNot wanted, not welcome, or not needed.

Unwanted in a sentence

• She deleted the unwanted files to free up space on the drive.

• The charity collected unwanted furniture from local households.

Where does unwanted come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent native English compound built from three layers. The core verb 'want' came into English from Old Norse 'vanta', which originally meant 'to lack' or 'to be missing', and only later shifted to mean 'to desire' the thing one lacks. The prefix 'un-' is one of the oldest and most productive negating elements in English, inherited directly from Old English and ultimately shared with German and other Germanic languages, where it simply reverses or negates the word it attaches to. The suffix '-ed' here forms the participial adjective, marking something on which the action has been performed, so 'unwanted' literally describes a thing that is not wanted. The negative sense ('not desired, not welcome') was settled in English by the seventeenth century. Because every piece is a familiar English building block, the spelling is regular: 'un' plus 'want' plus 'ed', with no doubled letters and no silent traps.

How the word is built

• un- (not)
• want (to wish for, lack)
• -ed (adjective/past-participle suffix)