unused

un- +‎ used

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ʌnˈjuːzd/, /ʌnˈjuːst/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ʌnˈjuzd/, /ʌnˈjust/

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• Rhymes: -uːzd, -uːst
• Hyphenation: un‧used

Unused colored pencils

unused (comparative more unused, superlative most unused)

1. (not comparable) Not used.

   I have two unused vouchers for a free meal.

   • 1972 October, “Losses from Operating a Farm”, in Farmer's Tax Guide: Income and Self Employment Tax (Internal Revenue Service; publication 225), 1973 edition, Washington, D.C.: Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, OCLC 5827575, page 35:

     If you have an unused credit for a year for which you also have additional tax liability because of an early disposal of an asset, you may reduce the added tax liability by the current year's unused credit that may be carried back solely because of recomputation of the investment credit for the prior year.

   • 1975 June, Edward W. Lawless; Thomas L. Ferguson; Alfred F. Meiners, “Introduction”, in Guidelines for the Disposal of Small Quantities of Unused Pesticides (Environmental Protection Technology Series; EPA-670/2-75-057), Cincinnati, Oh.: National Environmental Research Center, United States Environmental Protection Agency, OCLC 1979070, page 9:

     A particular problem is the disposal of small quantities of unwanted, surplus, or unused pesticides. Considerable attention has been given recently to the detoxification, prior to disposal, of sizable amounts of pesticides such as the herbicides returned from Vietnam. Some attention has also been given to the smaller amounts of unused pesticides at the consumer level, and in a few communities, specific pesticides such as DDT have been collected by authorities and safely disposed of by proven procedures.

   • 2001, George Alagiah, A Passage to Africa, London: Little, Brown Book Group, →ISBN:

     The Lancaster House agreement's clauses on land distribution, which were later written into the independence constitution, are worth reading if only to understand why [Robert] Mugabe reserves some of his most vitriolic verbal assaults for the British who, as the one-time colonial power, presided over the conference. The clause made it extremely difficult for Zimbabwe's democratically elected government to procure land, even land that was unused. The legal hoops through which a government would have to jump to do so were designed to ensure that it would rarely, if ever, happen.

2. Not accustomed (to), unfamiliar with.

   I am unused to the dark nights of the countryside.

   • 1603, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies, London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, Act V, scene ii, page 338:

     I pray you in your Letters, / When you ſhall theſe vnluckie deeds relate, / Speake of me, as I am. […] / Of one, whoſe ſubdu'd Eyes, / Albeit un-vsed to the melting moode, / Drops teares as faſt as the Arabian Trees / Their Medicinable gumme.

   • 1985, John Irving, The Cider House Rules: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: William Morrow and Company, ISBN 978-0-688-03036-0; republished as The Cider House Rules, London: Black Swan, 1986, ISBN 978-0-552-99204-6, page 237:

     Oh shut up, Wally, Candy was thinking, although she understood why he couldn't stop babbling. He was unused to an environment he couldn't instantly brighten; he was unused to a place so despairing that it insisted on silence. He was unused to absorbing a shock, to simply taking it in. Wally's talk-a-mile style was a good-hearted effort; he believed in improving the world – he had to fix everything, to make everything better.

   • 2014, Vladimir Nabokov, Olga Voronina and Brian Boyd, editors, Letters to Véra, London: Penguin Classics, →ISBN:

     He [Nabokov] begins this first letter [to Véra Nabokov] with memorable abruptness and no salutation ('I won't hide it: I'm so unused to being—well, understood, perhaps—so unused to it, that in the very first minutes of our meeting I thought: this is a joke, a masquerade trick ... […]').

The second pronunciation (/-uːst/) is used for the “not accustomed” sense (especially in informal speech), and is a devoicing of the terminal /zd/ to /st/ under the influence of the /t/ of the following to. In very informal situations the final stop is often elided completely, leading to the pronunciation of “unused to” as a single word /ˈʌn.juːs.tə/. In formal speech the second (/-uːst/) pronunciation is frequently proscribed in favour of the fully voiced (/-uːzd/) pronunciation, which is acceptable for either sense and is normally used for the “not used” sense in all registers.

• (not used): mint (adjective), new, pristine, virgin (adjective)
• (not accustomed (to)): unacquainted with, unfamiliar with

• (not used): used, old, preloved, pre-owned, secondhand
• (not accustomed (to)): acquainted with, familiar with

• unsued