unmolested

adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,911 of 15,258leans written

Unmolested means left alone and not interfered with. Passed unmolested, left unmolested, unmolested by the crowd.

This is the older and neutral sense, and it survives in accounts of ships, travellers and wildlife going by untroubled. Because molest now overwhelmingly means sexual assault, the word is startling in modern prose and is best avoided about people.

Definitions of unmolested

1adjectiveunmolestedLeft alone and not interfered with.C1
“The deer grazed unmolested in the park, since hunting had been banned for years.”

unmolested is a state.

Where it comes from

From un- + molested.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

unmolested in the wild

Refugees were allowed to return to their native country unmolested to dispose of their property in either country.
1950 in India
The exhausted Parliamentarian army was unable to block the royalist retreat and Charles was able to leave unmolested, despite being heavily outnumbered.
Second Battle of Newbury
The discovery of an unmolested Egyptian tomb of this significance is a very rare occurrence.
Iufaa
Although Bohemia remained unmolested, Moravia had much to endure.
Baidar
On 15 July, the Bolivian troops retreated unmolested from the pocket, carrying out all their heavy equipment with them.
Battle of Gondra

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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.

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