Unsent

ppl. a. Also 8 Sc. unsenn. [UN-¹ 8 b and 8 c. CF. ON. úsent (Da. usendt).]

  1.  Not sent for, unsummoned. (Cf. b.)

c. 1530.  Crt. of Love, 174. Of your free will ye should have come unsent.

1712.  Ramsay, Elegy Lucky Wood, ii. Death, wha came unsenn To Lucky Wood.

  b.  With for expressed.

1501.  Plumpton Corr. (Camden), 157. If I wold come up unsent for.

1598.  Dallington, Meth. Trav., X 3 b. They take one of a suddaine, comming vnlooked for and vnsent for.

a. 1641.  Bp. Mountagu, Acts & Mon. (1642), 298. Herod, unsent for, went to visit him.

1673.  Wycherley, Gentl. Dancing-Master, V. We Fiddlers, Sir, often come unsent for.

1717.  De Foe, Mem. Ch. Scot., II. 36. But Mr. Andrew Melvin … went unsent for.

1753.  Richardson, Grandison (1781), IV. xiv. 104. That no third person, unsent for, can be welcome.

  2.  Not sent or dispatched.

  In recent use esp. of letters or telegrams.

c. 1550.  Crowley, Inform. & Petit., iv b. The same Spirite … wytnesseth wyth my conscience that I renne not vnsent.

c. 1586.  Sidney, Arcadia, I. vi. He armed himselfe, and those few of his servants he had left unsent.

1608.  Dod & Cleaver, Expos. Prov. xi.–xii. 122. That we goe not unsent.

1647.  Jer. Taylor, Lib. Proph., vi. 124. More able men may be unsent then sent.

1841.  Fraser’s Mag., Jan., 111/2. Ye came na here unsent, and ye maun perform your errand.

1855.  Kingsley, Westw. Ho! xxvii. Her strange affection for the English was not unsent by Heaven.

  b.  With advs. or preps.

1549.  Paget, in Froude, Hist. Eng. (1860), V. 182. Send for all the council that be remaining unsent abroad.

1606.  Bp. Hall, Heaven upon Earth, xiii. Wks. (1625), 83. Thy heauenly Physician,… vnsent to, sends thee … a soueraigne remedie.

1656.  in Picton, L’pool Munic. Rec. (1883), I. 176. Whylst they stay at home unsent away.