undeterred

adjectiveB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans written

Undeterred means still going, despite everything in the way. The obstacle arrived, and it did not work.

The word almost always comes after a setback has been described: undeterred by the rain, undeterred by three rejections, undeterred, she tried again. That is its whole grammar — it needs the discouragement to have been named first, or the sentence sounds like it is missing something. It is a compliment about persistence, and it sits inside the family of deter, deterrent and deterrence, where the idea is always of something meant to put you off. Here, it did not.

Definitions of undeterred

1adjectiveundeterredContinuing despite difficulty or discouragement.B2
“Undeterred by the weather, they set off at dawn.”
synonyms: unfazed, undaunted

Where it comes from

From un- + deterred.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 24 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

undeterred in the wild

Bourdain believes that the kitchen is no place for dilettantes or slackers and that only those with a masochistic dedication to cooking will remain undeterred.
Kitchen Confidential
Margrave Philibert was a supporter of Protestantism and converted to it, undeterred by his father-in-law.
Philibert, Margrave of Baden-Baden
Byrne was undeterred when that league failed and attempted to launch the Women's American Basketball Association (WABA) in 1984 which lasted one season.
Bill Byrne (sports entrepreneur)

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.

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