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uncertainty

UK/ʌnˈsɜːtənti/US/ʌnˈsɝtənti/
nounB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,282 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: uncertainties

Uncertainty is the state of not knowing what will happen. Economic uncertainty, a period of uncertainty, reduce the uncertainty.

In science it is a measured quantity rather than a feeling, since every measurement is quoted with its uncertainty and one without is worthless. In economics, uncertainty rather than bad news is what stops investment.

United States Department of Agriculture · Public domain

Definitions of uncertainty

  1. 1noununcertaintyThe state of not knowing what will happen.B2+

    “There is still uncertainty about whether the factory will stay open.”

uncertainty is a state.

Where it comes from

Un-, not, plus certainty, from Latin certus, settled.

  1. Middle English

    uncerteynte

  2. English, today

    uncertainty

From Middle English uncerteynte; equivalent to un- + certainty or uncertain + -ty.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

uncertainty in the wild

  • The term seeks to capture the uncertainty regarding one's own capability, adversary capability, and adversary intent during an engagement, operation, or campaign.

    Fog of war

  • The term has become commonly used to define uncertainty mechanics in wargames.

    Fog of war

  • The uncertainty u can be expressed in a number of ways.

    Propagation of uncertainty

  • The measurement uncertainty is often taken as the standard deviation of a state-of-knowledge probability distribution over the possible values that could be attributed to a measured quantity.

    Measurement uncertainty

  • Thus, the relative measurement uncertainty is the measurement uncertainty divided by the absolute value of the measured value, when the measured value is not zero.

    Measurement uncertainty

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

  • certainty