ppl. a. [UN-1 8.] Not aided; unassisted: a. In predicative use; also const. by.
1667. Milton, P. L., VI. 141. Who,… with solitarie hand Reaching beyond all limit, at one blow Unaided could have finisht thee.
1791. Cowper, Iliad, XVI. 652. Thy allies, who, for thy sake,… Perish, unaided and unmiss’d by thee.
1796. Mme. D’Arblay, Camilla, V. 376. I cannot support it unaided.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., I. i. 5. Mere reasoning, unaided by experiment, was incompetent to answer.
1888. Barrie, When a Man’s Single (1900), 71/1. Angus is longing to pull us up the river unaided.
b. Attrib.; in later use esp. of the eye.
1676. Glanvill, Ess., iii. 24. The distance of the Heavens is so vast, that our unaided Senses can give us but extreamly imperfect Informations of that Upper World.
1712. Blackmore, Creation, II. 77. Counting those the unaided eye Can see, or by invented tubes descry.
1773. Observ. State Poor, 63. The terrors of unaided poverty would happily operate to the advantage of those, who … prodigally waste those earnings.
1827. Scott, Chron. Canongate, Introd. I had therefore the task of avowing myself … as the sole and unaided author of these Novels of Waverley.
1855. Bain, Senses & Int., III. iii. § 2. The multiplication of unaided eyes could never equal the vision of one person with a telescope.
Hence Unaidedly adv.
1859. G. Wilson, Mem. E. Forbes, ii. (1861), 42. Forbes … had … unaidedly discovered the true scope of his intellect.
