uncertain

un- +‎ certain

• IPA^(key): /ʌnˈsɜːtən/

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• Rhymes: -ɜː(r)tən

uncertain (comparative more uncertain, superlative most uncertain)

1. Not certain; unsure.
   • (Can we date this quote?) John Tillotson

     Man, without the protection of a superior Being, […] is uncertain of everything that he hopes for.

2. Not known for certain; questionable.

   Tomorrow's weather is uncertain.

3. Not yet determined; undecided.
4. Variable and subject to change.
5. Fitful or unsteady.
   • 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter III, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915, OCLC 40817384:

     Turning back, then, toward the basement staircase, she began to grope her way through blinding darkness, but had taken only a few uncertain steps when, of a sudden, she stopped short and for a little stood like a stricken thing, quite motionless save that she quaked to her very marrow in the grasp of a great and enervating fear.

6. Unpredictable or capricious.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Sir Walter Scott

     O woman! in our hours of ease, / Uncertain, coy, and hard to please!

• certain

• uncertainly, uncertainty

uncertain pl (plural only)

1. (with "the") Something uncertain.
   • 2011, John Lyons, The Phantom of Chance: From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century French Literature

     Thinking about the uncertain refines our perception of the certain, and generally this takes place in a framework in which the uncertain is the future and the certain is the present.

• N Centauri, centaurin, encurtain, runcinate