1. Not furnished with, or taught by, experience; not skilled or trained in this way.
1569. Underdown, Ovid’s Invect. Ibis, Pref. A vj b. If you wil bear with mine vnexperienced iudgemente.
1608. Willet, Hexapla Exod., 273. No man will commit his … bodie to an vnexperienced physitian.
1678. Otway, Friendship in F., IV. i. Her natural and unexperienc’d tenderness exceeded practis’d charms.
1751. Johnson, Rambler, No. 175, ¶ 10. Credulity is the common failing of unexperienced virtue.
1793. Holcroft, trans. Lavater’s Physiog., i. 16. Shades scarcely discernible to an unexperienced eye.
1822. Chisholm, in Good, Study Med. (1829), II. 213. Let the young and unexperienced practitioner guard himself against it.
1860. A. L. Windsor, Ethica, iii. 146. An unexperienced hand might have expected [etc.].
b. Const. in.
1599. Hakluyt, Voy., II. II. 138. Our English Surgeons (for the most part) be vnexperienced in hurts that come by sbot.
1620. E. Blount, Horæ Subs., 85. To be vnexperienced in the first, argues much disability for the latter.
1654. trans. Martini’s Conq. China, 211. He quickly dispersed them, being wholy unexperienced in Military Discipline.
1760–72. H. Brooke, Fool of Qual. (1809), IV. 27. My … child here, is unexperienced in the world.
1771. Smollett, Humph. Cl., Oct. ii. Unexperienced as I am in the commerce of life.
c. absol. (with the).
1622. Peacham, Compl. Gent., xvi. 200. If it be the common Law of Nature, that the learned should … instruct the ignorant, the experienced, the vnexperienced.
1665. Boyle, Occas. Refl., IV. xix. 125. Whatever the unexperienc’d may imagine.
1742. Johnson’s Debates (1787), II. 100. By these arts I have known the young and unexperienced kept in suspence.
1810. Crabbe, Borough, xxiii. 87. The unexperienced and the inexpert.
2. Not known or felt by experience.
1698. Norris, Pract. Disc., IV. 89. A new and altogether unexperienc’d State and way of Life.
1721. Perry, Daggenh. Breach, 69. My Work was in a Method entirely new, and unexperienc’d by those Persons appointed to carry on the same in my Absence.
1756. Monitor, No. 27. I. 239. The towers … gave me an unexperienced delight, as I had never seen such a place before.
1844. Disraeli, Coningsby, IX. v. There was … no unexperienced scene or sensation of life to distract his intelligence.
Hence Unexperiencedness.
1654. Gayton, Pleas. Notes, I. viii. 30. Whereat he vapoured extreamely, shaking his head at the fellows unexperiencednesse.
1727. Bailey (vol. II.), s.v., Unskilfulness.
