ppl. a. [UN-1 8.] Not guided in a particular path or direction; left to take one’s own course or way.
1585. Abp. Sandys, Serm., xix. 341. The ship cannot keepe hir right course vnguided but will fall vpon euerie sande.
1633. Fletcher & Shirley, Night-Walker, IV. i. Ha. The world’s a Labyrinth, where unguided men Walk up and down to find their weariness.
1674. Boyle, Grounds Corpusc. Philos., 3. The material parts being able by their own unguided motions, to cast themselves into such a system.
1726. Pope, Odyss., XX. 441. Unguided hence my trembling steps I bend.
1801. Southey, Thalaba, I. xviii. Not by Heaven unseen, Nor in unguided wanderings, hast thou reach’d This secret place.
1856. Kane, Arct. Expl., II. xxi. 211. The dogs speed from hut to hut, almost unguided by their drivers.
1891. T. Hardy, Tess, ii. An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad weather.
b. fig. Of action, conduct, etc.: Undirected, uncontrolled.
1597. Shaks., 2 Hen. IV., IV. iv. 59. Th’ vnguided Dayes, And rotten Times, that you shall looke vpon.
1651. Hobbes, Leviath., I. viii. 37. Passions unguided, are for the most part meere Madnesse.
1711. Steele, Spect., No. 167, ¶ 1. The unhappy Force of an Imagination, unguided by the Check of Reason and Judgment.
1760–72. H. Brooke, Fool of Qual. (1809), III. 136. He … has left his own household unchastened and unguided.
1856. Froude, Hist. Eng., II. 26. It [Protestantism] sprung up spontaneously, unguided, unexcited,… among the masses of the nation.
a. 1880. Geo. Eliot, Leaves fr. Note-bk., Ess. (1884), 364. They are not left to their own unguided rashness, or their own unguided pusillanimity.
Hence Unguidedly adv.
1660. trans. Amyraldus’ Treat. conc. Relig., II. i. 153. To discharge all his actions at randome, and permit his natural appetites to run unguidedly at a venture.
1885. ‘E. F. Byrrne’ (Emma Frances Brooke), Entangled, I. xi. Her tongue spoke strangely and unguidedly.
