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unresolved

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

Unresolved means still not settled. The argument that never got finished, the question the meeting ran out of time for.

You meet it wherever something has been left hanging: an unresolved dispute, an unresolved case, unresolved feelings about someone you used to love. In music an unresolved chord is one that never returns home, and the ear keeps waiting for it. Technical fields borrow it as well — an unresolved bug, an unresolved reference in code. The thread running through all of them is the same: the matter is open, and everybody knows it.

Definitions of unresolved

  1. 1adjectiveunresolvedStill not settled, answered or dealt with.B2

    “The dispute remains unresolved after three years.”

    synonyms: outstanding, open, unsettled

Where it comes from

From un- + resolved.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 16 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

unresolved in the wild

  • Problems 8a, 8b, 9, 12, 16, 20 and 22 are unresolved or widely agreed as unresolved despite some partial results.

    Hilbert's problems

  • Of these, six research avenues were found to be nonviable, four were identified as opportunities for continued research, and four remain unresolved.

    Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project

  • Strong suggested using only Neogastropoda as a clade within the clade Hypsogastropoda, and to include the unresolved superfamilies of the Hypsogastropoda within the Littorinimorpha.

    Littorinimorpha

  • Relationships between Archontophoenix and the other genera of subtribe Archontophoenicinae, including the New Caledonia endemic Actinokentia, Chambeyronia and Kentiopsis are unresolved.

    Archontophoenix

  • The purple-crested turaco (Gallirex porphyreolophus) or, in South Africa, the purple-crested loerie, language) is a species of bird in the turaco clade with an unresolved phylogenetic placement.

    Purple-crested turaco

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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.