sight unseen

English

Alternative forms

• unsight unseen (dated)

Etymology

Reportedly first attested 1892

Pronunciation

• enPR: sīt′-ŭn-sēn

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːn

Adjective

sight unseen (not comparable)

1. (idiomatic) Not having seen the object beforehand.
   • 1902, Myrtle Reed, chapter 5, in Lavender and Old Lace:

     When she wrote, asking me to take charge of her house while she went to Europe, I gladly consented, sight unseen.

   • 2005 August 2, Michiko Kakutani, “They'll Take Manhattan, for a Million or More”, in The New York Times‎^[1], retrieved 1 Sep. 2008:

     More than $300 million worth of condominiums were sold in the new Time Warner complex sight unseen while the building was still under construction.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:sight unseen.

Translations

not seen beforehand

• Finnish: näkemätön
• French: les yeux fermés (fr)
• Italian: a scatola chiusa
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: usett

  Nynorsk: usett

• Polish: w ciemno (adverb), bez oglądania

See also

• pig in a poke