different between unseen vs unsee

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?n?si?n/
• Rhymes: -i?n

Etymology 1

From Middle English unsen, unseyn, unseien, from Old English un?esewen, from Proto-Germanic *unsewanaz, equivalent to un- +? seen. Cognate with Dutch ongezien (“unseen”), German Low German unsehn (“unseen”), German ungesehen (“unseen”).

Adjective

unseen (not comparable)

1. Not seen or discovered; invisible.
   • 1890, Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 9:

     You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream.

   • 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture 3:

     Were one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.
2. Unskilled; inexperienced.
3. Not hitherto noticed; unobserved.
   • ca. 1594', William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, Act I, sc. 2:

     I to the world am like a drop of water

     That in the ocean seeks another drop,

     Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,

     Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.

Derived terms

• sight unseen

Translations

Etymology 2

un- +? seen

Verb

unseen

1. past participle of unsee

   What has been seen cannot be unseen.

Noun

unseen (plural unseens)

1. An examination involving material not previously seen or studied.

   I have French and Latin unseens this summer.

English

Etymology

un- +? see

Verb

unsee (third-person singular simple present unsees, present participle unseeing, simple past unsaw, past participle unseen)

1. To undo the act of seeing something; to erase the memory of having seen something, or otherwise reverse the effect of having seen something.
   • 1829, Robert Taylor, "Infidel Mission.—Fifteenth Bulletin", in The Lion, volume IV, number 10, page 304:

     We have shown the world, and it cannot be unseen, it cannot be unknown, it cannot be forgotten, that Christianity cannot be defended on any ground where Infidelity can get an inch of fair play against it.

   • 1897 March 20, George Bernard Shaw, "Shakespeare in Manchester", printed in 1906, Dramatic Opinions and Essays with an Apology by Bernard Shaw,^[sic] Volume 2, Brentano's (1922), page 215:

     I have only seen the performance once; and I would not unsee it again if I could; but none the less I am a broken man after it.

   • 1969, Joseph McElroy, Hind's Kidnap, page 180:

     once you’ve seen this you bear always the burden of its sight. And, as Laura says, you can’t unsee it.

   • 1977, Stephen King, The Shining:

     Once you saw the face of a god in those jumbled blacks and whites, it was everybody out of the pool—you could never unsee it.

   • 1991, E. Roy Weintraub, Stabilizing Dynamics, page 94:

     Once one has “seen” the well-known gestalt psychology drawing of the young woman in a fur coat, she cannot be “unseen” after one notices the alternative, an old crone

Translations

See also

• what has been seen cannot be unseen

Anagrams

• ensue, seuen