unwill

English

Etymology 1

From un- (“lack or absence of”) +‎ will (noun). Compare Dutch onwil.

Noun

unwill (plural unwills)

1. Lack or absence of will; willlessness; undesire.
   • 2005, Melodie Calvert, Jennifer Terry, Processed Lives:

     The first challenge to shaping and taming this emerging world is the will itself and the human problem of unwill, especially in relation to femininity.

Etymology 2

From un- (reverse action prefix) +‎ will (verb).

Verb

unwill (third-person singular simple present unwills, present participle unwilling, simple past and past participle unwilled)

1. (transitive) To annul or reverse by an act of the will.
   • 1867, Dante Alighieri, “Canto II”, in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, transl., The Divine Comedy, volume I (Inferno), Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 8, lines 37–42:

     And as he is, who unwills what he willed, / And by new thoughts doth his intention change, / So that from his design he quite withdraws, / Such I became, upon that dark hillside, / Because, in thinking, I consumed the emprise, / Which was so very prompt in the beginning.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “unwill”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)