unfamiliarity

plural unfamiliarities

1. countableuncountableLack of familiarity; ignorance or inexperience.

   Due to my unfamiliarity with the library's catalog system, it took several hours to find the book.

   2 more examples

   He let Sandy stand for a minute and then took the saddle off. Several more of these saddlings and unsaddlings followed. Then finally the saddle was cinched. Again Sandy repeated his pattern of calming down after the first unfamiliarity of a new experience had worn off. […] Before long Sandy accepted the saddle as if he’d been born with one on his back.

   1954, Troy Nesbit [pseudonym; Franklin Folsom], “Sacking Out”, in Sand Dune Pony (Wilderness Mysteries; 1), Racine, Wis.: Whitman Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 145

   Such insights can, however, not be expected from a state of near-total unfamiliarity with what has been going on in a field: innocence may be a good thing, ignorance certainly is not.

   1989 January 28, Werner Winter, “On a new claim concerning substratum influence upon Tocharian”, in Central Asiatic Journal, volume 33, number 1/2, Harrassowitz Verlag, →ISSN, page 128