Unswept

ppl. a. (UN-¹ 8 b.)

1597.  Middleton, Wisd. Solomon, xii. 3. A house-room long unswept will gather dust.

1607.  Shaks., Cor., II. iii. 126. The Dust on antique Time would lye vnswept.

1678.  R. L’Estrange, Seneca’s Morals, Of Anger, vii. II. 73. A spot upon a Dish…, or an unswept Hearth.

1683.  Dryden, Life Plutarch, in P.’s Lives (1700), I. 24. To these he added a curious collection…, that he might leave nothing unswept behind him.

1760.  Sterne, Tr. Shandy, III. xix. His head [was] like a smoke-jack;—the funnel unswept, and the ideas whirling round and round about in it.

1821.  Lamb, Wks. (1908), I. 511. The intolerable crash of the unswept cinder, betwixt your foot and the marble.

1852.  G. P. R. James, Pequinillo, II. 63. I have left nothing unswept for want of a broom.

  transf.  1851.  Carlyle, in Froude, Life (1884), II. 84. The town had a dirty unswept look still.