unpaid

UK/ʌnˈpeɪd/US/ʌnˈpeɪd/

adjectiveB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #8,344 of 15,258leans written

Unpaid means not yet settled, or done without wages. An unpaid bill, unpaid work, an unpaid internship.

The two senses point opposite ways: an unpaid bill is money owed to somebody else, while unpaid work is labour nobody paid for. Unpaid care, mostly done by women, is worth more than most national industries.

Definitions of unpaid

1adjectiveunpaidNot yet settled, or done without wages.B1+
“She did months of unpaid work as an intern before getting a proper job.”

unpaid is a state.

Where it comes from

From un- + paid.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

unpaid in the wild

Private employers sometimes provide either or both unpaid and paid parental leave outside of or in addition to any legal mandate.
Parental leave
Major components include unpaid care and household work, volunteering as a form of charity work, and unpaid internships.
Unpaid work
Paid care occurs in formal employment settings, while unpaid care is typically carried out within families and communities, and households often combine both forms.
Care work
Empirical research measures unpaid care primarily through time-use data, usually distinguishing between housework and child care.
Care work

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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