Unwittingly

How to spell unwittingly

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce unwittingly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does unwittingly mean?

1. adverbWithout being aware of what one is doing; unintentionally.

Unwittingly in a sentence

• He unwittingly signed a contract that committed him to two more years.

• The staff unwittingly shared customer data with the wrong supplier.

Where does unwittingly come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This adverb is built on the old English verb 'wit', meaning 'to know', which descends from the Old English 'witan', 'to know or be aware'. That verb belongs to a deep Germanic family and is a cousin of the noun 'wit' (originally the mind or the faculty of knowing) and of related words like 'wise' and 'wisdom'. The present participle 'witting' meant 'knowing' or 'aware', so 'wittingly' described doing something knowingly and on purpose. Attaching the negative prefix 'un-' produced 'unwittingly', meaning 'without knowing, by accident', a form well established in English by the 1500s. The spelling trap sits in the middle: the doubled t of 'witting' followed by the easily dropped 'ing' before the '-ly', so writers must remember both the double t and the full '-ingly' ending.

How the word is built

• un- (not)
• witting (knowing, from the verb wit: to know)
• -ly (adverb suffix)