Unconscious means not aware and unable to be woken. Knocked unconscious, found unconscious, unconscious for four minutes.
In first aid it is the state that decides everything: check breathing, put them in the recovery position, call for help. It also means not deliberate: an unconscious habit, unconscious bias — where it describes something happening below awareness rather than a lack of it. In psychology the unconscious is the part of the mind outside awareness. Note subconscious, which is used loosely for the same thing and is not a clinical term.
1adjectiveunconsciousNot aware and unable to be woken.
“The driver was unconscious when the ambulance arrived.”
2adjectivehappeningHappening without awareness or intention.
“It was an unconscious habit and it drove everybody mad.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
unconscious is a state of unawareness.
Latin
cōnscius — conscious, conscious of guilt
English
conscious
English, today
unconscious
Built from
From un- + conscious. conscious First use appears c. 1573 in the sense of "aware of wrongdoing".[https://web.archive.org/web/20220714064352/https://www.lexico.com/definition/conscious] From Latin cōnscius (“conscious, conscious of guilt”), itself from con- (a form of com- (“together”)) + scio (“to know”) + -us.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA