ppl. a. [UN-1 8. Cf. Du. ongeopened.]
1. Not opened; left, or remaining, closed or shut: a. Of letters, books, etc.
1600. E. Blount, trans. Conestaggio, 74. This Letter … remained still with them vnopened.
1700. Farquhar, Constant Couple, I. i. Angelica, send it [sc. a letter] back unopened! say you?
1711. Lady M. W. Montagu, Lett. to W. Montagu, 26 Feb. If you write, be not displeased if I send it back unopened.
1766. Parlt. Deb. (1813), XVI. 303. [They] went to statute books before unopened,… and there made the amazing, astonishing discovery.
1836. H. Coleridge, Northern Worthies (1852), I. 43. A sealed and unopened epistle.
1865. Dickens, Mut. Fr., I. iii. A book … unopened on a shelf.
1888. Jacobi, Printer’s Vocab., Unopened edges, applied to books the edges of which have not been opened.
b. In other applications.
1627. May, Lucan, III. D 7. Before the yet vnopen’d doore he stay’d.
1742. Young, Nt. Th., II. 468. Like bales unopen’d to the sun.
1796. Withering, Brit. Plants (ed. 3), III. 689. Unopened flowers nodding.
1843. R. J. Graves, Syst. Clin. Med., ix. 102. I have frequently directed the blister to be left unopened.
1884. in A. Cawston, Street Improv. London (1893), 117. The consequences of leaving culs de sac even of a respectable kind unopened.
2. Not opened up for use.
1756. P. Browne, Jamaica, 13. Every settler inclined to reserve some unopened land.
1858. Ld. St. Leonards, Handy-bk. Prop. Law, xxiii. 179. If you were to sell part of your estate, reserving the unopened mines with a right of entry.
1890. Hallett, 1000 Miles on Elephant, 434. [To] throw open for British commerce the most magnificent, unopened, and available market in the world.
