unfinal

U1N1F4I1N1A1L1

adjective

Not final; unresolved; inconclusive.

Scrabble 10

Meanings

adjectiveunfinal (comparative more unfinal, superlative most unfinal)

comparative more unfinal · superlative most unfinal

  1. Not final; unresolved; inconclusive.

    So this was suicide. How unfinal it appeared to be.

    1997, Thomas Mallon, Dewey Defeats Truman, Vintage, published 2013, →ISBN, page 329
    2 more examples

    Huge French Revolutions, Napoleonisms, then Bourbonisms with their corollary of Three Days, finishing in very unfinal Louis-Philippisms: all this ought to be didactic! All this may have taught us, that False Aristocracies are insupportable; that No-Aristocracies, Liberty-and-Equalities are impossible […]

    1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “chapter I, Aristocracies”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book IV (Horoscope)

    This resistance, on the writer's part, could well account for his mildly enigmatic, unfinal and anti-climactic denouements, often narrativised as happy endings of sorts, without actually being felt to be so by the characters, not even ironically.

    2013, Maria Grazia Nicolosi, “'And to defeat that shadow…he had to take it in homeopathically, in minute quantities of conscious reparation': Adam Thorpe's Unsentimental Historical Romances”, in Jean-Michel Ganteau, Susana Onega, editors, Trauma and Romance in Contemporary British Literature, Routledge, →ISBN, page 175

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

unfinal. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/unfinal

MLA

“unfinal.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/unfinal. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “unfinal,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/unfinal.

Source: unfinal on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.