undone

Undone means unfastened, or left unfinished. A shoelace undone, a job still undone at the end of the day.

It is the past participle of undo, and it does two jobs. Physically, something undone has come open: buttons undone, a knot undone, hair undone and falling loose. Abstractly, work left undone is work nobody did, and there is a standing phrase for the guilt of it — things left undone. Older and more dramatic is the sense of ruined: I am undone, says a character whose secret has just come out. That use survives mainly in books, and in the pattern his own greed undid him.