Unowned

ppl. a. [UN-¹ 8.]

  1.  Not possessed as property; destitute of an owner or possessor.

1611.  Cotgr., Vuayves,… things which bee left, abandoned, escheated, or vnowned.

1635.  J. Hayward, trans. Biondi’s Banish’d Virg., 57. The Law declareth things unowned to be his that first comes to the enjoying of them.

1681.  O. Heywood, Diaries, etc. (1881), II. 229. They would cry it at the crosse with some other unowned goods.

1829.  Southey, Sir T. More, I. 94. Like the dogs at Lisbon and Constantinople, unowned, unbroken to any useful purpose.

1884.  Pall Mall G., 12 Jan., 5/1. Unowned wires, he admitted, must be dealt with.

  transf.  1634.  Milton, Comus, 407. Lest som ill greeting touch attempt the person Of our unowned sister [= 350 our lost sister].

  2.  Unacknowledged; unadmitted.

1715.  Gay, Epist. to Earl of Burlington, 40. Here unown’d infants find their daily food; For should the maiden mother nurse her son, ’Twould spoil her match.

1748.  Richardson, Clarissa (1811), II. xliv. 321. I know not my own heart, if I have any of that latent or unowned inclination.

1793.  W. Roberts, Looker-on, No. 42 (1794), II. 205. An action unowned by the delicacy of its real author.

1865.  Miss Yonge, Dove in Eagle’s Nest, vii. The poor little unowned bride had more to undergo than her imagination had conceived.

1897.  Pullen-Burry, Blotted Out, 65. [Her] unowned child … had blossomed into one of the most famous actresses of the day.