unbegotten
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Adjective
[edit]unbegotten (not comparable)
- Not begotten.
- 1667, John Milton, “Book X”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 979–988:
- If care of our descent perplex us most, / Which must be born to certain woe, devour'd / By Death at last—and miserable it is / To be to others cause of misery, / Our own begotten, and of our loins to bring / Into this cursed world a woeful race, / That after wretched life must be at last / Food for so foul a monster—in thy power / It lies, yet ere conception, to prevent / The race unblest, to being yet unbegot.
- 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 119:
- Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun.
Alternative forms
[edit]- unbegot (archaic)