unfledged

un- +‎ fledged

• IPA^(key): /ʌnˈflɛd͡ʒd/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

unfledged (not comparable)

1. Not having feathers; (of a bird) not yet having developed its wings and feathers and become able to fly.

   Synonyms: featherless, callow

   Antonym: fledged

   • 1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act III, scene iii]:

     […] we, poor unfledged,
     Have never wing’d from view o’ the nest, nor know not
     What air’s from home.

   • 1817 December​, [Jane Austen], Persuasion; published in Northanger Abbey: And Persuasion. […], volume (please specify |volume=III or IV), London: John Murray, […], 1818, OCLC 318384910:

     “The little Durands were there, I conclude,” said she, “with their mouths open to catch the music, like unfledged sparrows ready to be fed. They never miss a concert.”

   • 1854, Henry David Thoreau, Walden, “The Bean-Field,”

     The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.

   • 1869, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, chapter 28, in Little Women: Or, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, part second, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, OCLC 30743985:

     “Boy and girl. Aren’t they beauties?” said the proud papa, beaming upon the little red squirmers as if they were unfledged angels.

2. (figuratively) Not yet fully grown or developed; not yet mature.
   • c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The VVinters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act I, scene ii]:

     Temptations have since then been born to’s; for
     In those unfledged days was my wife a girl;
     Your precious self had then not cross’d the eyes
     Of my young play-fellow.

   • 1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, 1st American edition, Boston, Mass.: […] Peter Edes for Thomas and Andrews, […], published 1792, OCLC 5625662194:

     Besides, it is not possible to give a young person a just view of life; he must have struggled with his own passions before he can estimate the force of the temptation which betrayed his brother into vice. Those who are entering life, and those who are departing, see the world from such very different points of view, that they can seldom think alike, unless the unfledged reason of the former never attempted a solitary flight.

   • 1848, James Russell Lowell, “Si Descendero in Infernum, Ades” in Poems. Second Series, Cambridge: G. Nichols, p. 38,

     Yet they who watch your God-compelled return
     May see your happy perihelion burn<
     Where the calm sun his unfledged planets broods.

   • 1946, Olaf Stapledon, Death into Life, Chapter 4,

     Fantasy, sheer fantasy? Perhaps! But when we think of time and of eternity, intelligence reels. The shrewdest questions that we can ask about them are perhaps falsely shaped, being but flutterings of the still unfledged human mentality.

3. (figuratively) Inexperienced, like a tyro or novice.

   Antonym: experienced

   • 1898, Gertrude Atherton, The Californians, Book I, Chapter 23,

     He had long since determined that Magdaléna should marry no one of the sons of his moneyed friends, nor yet any of the sprouting lawyers or unfledged business youths who made up the masculine half of the younger fashionable set.

   • 1915, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of the Island, Chapter 37,

     Aunt Jamesina had a proper respect for the cloth even in the case of an unfledged parson.