c1540 (?a1400) Gest Historiale Destr. Troy (2002) f. 211^v But thurgh wilys & wit he wan of his daunger Vnpairet of his person, preuely he stale.

?1546 W. Peryn Thre Serm. i. f. xxiii The bushe remained both grene and fressh (the beutye thereof vnpayred).

1583 J. Foxe Actes & Monuments (ed. 4) I. iv. 229/2 I shalbe in no councell,..whereby either of them or any member of them may be unpayred, or wherby they may be taken with any euill taking.

1598 J. Florio Worlde of Wordes Sparato,..vnpaired or vncoupled.

a1665 J. Quarles tr. J. Cats Self-conflict (1680) 24 Nor any thing that breath'd would God then spare; But onely of each kind one single pair Of Male and Female; other unpair'd heaps Th' floods Pris'ners were.

1736 Forsaken Fair 4 Let hireling Priests unite in venal Bands The unpair'd Hearts.

1778 J. Thistlethwaite Man of Experience I. xvi. 170 He endeavoured to support his tottering frame..by the aid of two miserable and unpaired crutches.

1812 G. Crabbe Tales iv. 63 Others, ill match'd, with minds unpair'd, repent.

1883 H. N. Martin & W. A. Moale Handbk. Vertebr. Dissect. 133 A single unpaired air sac will be seen just beneath the anterior portion of the sternum.

1923 Proc. Royal Soc. B. 95 259 An oviduct and an unpaired gonad were present, and the latter proved to be an ovotestis.

1955 Jrnl. Royal Statist. Soc. 17 3 A later application of the permutation principle to comparing means of unpaired data.

2008 Independent 10 Oct. 36/5 Put all your socks in one drawer, unpaired, and just use the first two that come to hand each morning.

1839 Leicester Chron. 29 June Absent unpaired, six members of the House of Commons.

1879 Newport (Rhode Island) Daily News 22 May Their associates declare that the present neglect of duty by the absent unpaired members is one of the most flagrant cases they have known.

1930 A. J. Balfour Chapters Autobiogr. xiii. 173 How many Liberals would abstain unpaired?

1983 Daily Tel. (Nexis) 30 June 5/1 The whips have proposed what they call a ‘bisque’ system under which batches of unpaired MPs would be allowed a free evening when it was clear the Government had enough votes.

2007 M. DiCenzo & L. Ryan in C. R. Ackland Residual Media xiii. 251 The Common Cause published division lists of the names of all those who voted in favor, against, and who were absent and unpaired.

1916 G. N. Lewis in Jrnl. Amer. Chem. Soc. 38 771 Molecules of this class which contain an odd or unpaired electron will for the sake of brevity be called odd molecules.

1952 C. A. Coulson Valence iv. 102 On account of its single vπ electron this molecule possesses an unpaired electron, whose spin will give rise to paramagnetism.

2012 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 2 Oct. 1 A research team he led was the first to show that abnormal free radicals—groups of molecules with unpaired electrons—might be the earliest indicator of cancer in laboratory rats.