[UN-1 4, 12. Cf. WFris. on-, ûnrâst, MLG., MHG. unreste; MDu. onraste (Du. onrast), MLG., MHG. unraste (G. unrast); MDu. onruste (Du. onrust), MLG. unruste (LG. unrust, unrüst, unrost), and WANREST.] Absence of rest; disturbance, turmoil, trouble.
a. 1340. Hampole, Psalter lxxxiv. 8. Þe vnrest of þis life. Ibid., cxviii. 165. Charite puttis away … vnrest of thoght.
c. 1374. Chaucer, Troylus, IV. 879. That cause is of þis sorwe and þis vnreste.
14[?]. Rule Syon Monast., liii., in Collect. Topogr. (1834), I. 31. In the dortour … none schal … make any noise of unreste, aboute makyng of ther beddes.
c. 1440. Gesta Rom., xlvii. 196 (Harl. MS.). Wher so euer … eny discorde or vnrest was regnynge.
a. 1513. Fabyan, Chron., VII. 417. Which tourned hym to great dishonoure and his lordes to great vnrest.
1559. Mirr. Mag. (1563), V iv. Furth streamde the teares, recordes of his vnrest.
1638. W. Sclater, Serm. Experimentall, 50. A sweet soliloquie of David with his soul, checking it … for the disquiet, and unrest it passionately had plunged it self into.
1685. Dryden, trans. Lucretius, III. 273. If the foolish race of man … Cou’d find as well the cause of this unrest, And all this burden lodg’d within the breast.
1815. Byron, Parisina, v. And mutters she in her unrest A name.
1849. Robertson, Serm., Ser. I. i. (1866), 10. The unrest and the agony that lie hid in the heart of man.
1873. Symonds, Grk. Poets, i. 18. To the anarchy and unrest of transition succeeds the demand for constitutional order.
b. In pl. Somewhat rare.
1477. Earl Rivers (Caxton), Dictes (1877), 17. Of thought cometh the wakyngis and vnrestis.
1513. Douglas, Æneid, XIII. ii. 74. Be all wais noysum and onrestis, And all that horribill was.
c. 1611. Chapman, Iliad, VIII. 405. Both Goddesses … contriving still afflicted Troy’s unrests.
1628. Wither, Brit. Rememb., VI. 1957. Nor, thereby, many other mens unrests Occasion they alone.
