unknown quantity
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English
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[edit]Audio (General Australian): (file)
Noun
[edit]unknown quantity (plural unknown quantities)
- (idiomatic) A person or thing whose nature or value is a mystery.
- Antonyms: known quantity, household name
- 1895 October, Stephen Crane, chapter I, in The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, page 14:
- Whatever he had learned of himself was here of no avail. He was an unknown quantity.
- 1907, The Bookman, volume 25, page 166:
- . . . the Evening Post of this city to refer to him recently as "the young Belgian painter," and to the general public he is an unknown quantity.
- 1963 June, “Beyond the Channel: France: High-power diesels”, in Modern Railways, page 417:
- The big French diesel is something of an unknown quantity, whereas many French-built electric locomotives developing 3,000 h.p. and more have been well proved in service.
- 1971, Lyndon Johnson, “"I feel like I have already been here a year"”, in The Vantage Point[1], Holt, Reinhart & Winston, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 18:
- In spite of more than three decades of public service, I knew I was an unknown quantity to many of my countrymen and to much of the world when I assumed office.
- 1982 September 22, Henry Tanner, “Gemayel Brothers Assessed in Syria”, in New York Times, retrieved 9 January 2016:
- Amin Gemayel, it is felt here, is an unknown quantity and it is impossible to predict how he will act.
- 2015 December 6, “Congratulations on 10 years, David Cameron - but don't rest on your laurels”, in Telegraph, UK, retrieved 9 January 2016:
- [H]e was still an unknown quantity – a young, untested figure.
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see unknown, quantity.
- 2012 January 1, Richard N. Aufmann, Joanne Lockwood, Beginning Algebra[2], Cengage Learning, →ISBN, page 77:
- Many of the applications of mathematics require that you identify an unknown quantity, assign a variable to that quantity, and then attempt to express another unknown quantity in terms of that variable.
- 2016, Steve Pace, The Projects of Skunk Works: 75 Years of Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs[3], Voyageur Press, →ISBN, page 145:
- So promising was the Skunk Works' stealth cruise missile offering, the USAF ordered an unknown quantity of these missiles under a highly classified program dubbed Senior Prom.
Synonyms
[edit]See also
[edit]References
[edit]- “unknown quantity”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.