unsure
/ʌnˈʃʊə
/adjective
1Not feeling, showing, or done with confidence and certainty: she was feeling nervous, unsure of herself [with clause]: she was unsure how to reply...
- He had lost his confidence on the course and a horse who is unsure of himself is certainly not ready for an Olympic Games.
- If you're unsure about a certain switch then you will find a most innovative quick reference fold out card in the glovebox.
- It is a common error for such instructions to be omitted and for respondents either to be unsure about how to reply or to make inappropriate selections.
Synonyms
unconfident, not confident, lacking confidence, lacking self-confidence, not self-assured, lacking assurance, unassertive;
insecure, hesitant, diffident, timid, timorous, anxious, apprehensive, fearful
undecided, irresolute, dithering, equivocating, in two minds, in a dilemma, in a quandary, ambivalent, vague
dubious, doubtful, sceptical, distrustful, suspicious, mistrustful, uncertain, unconvinced
informal iffy
1.1(Of a fact) not fixed or certain: the date is unsure...
- It is just that the opening date was unsure.
Synonyms
not fixed, not settled, undecided, indeterminate, uncertain, unknown
Derivatives
unsurely
- Somehow, unsurely and unsteadily, Scotland picked themselves off the turf, and in the middle phase of the game played with enough fire to keep the scoreline within acceptable bounds.
- He settled onto it unsurely, bounced a few times, and deemed it sufficient - it was not his old bed, some part of him muttered venomously, but it would currently be better than sleeping in the stables with the horses.
- ‘Call me Maddie,’ she said a little unsurely now.
unsureness
- He says, ‘When I started writing seriously, in 1970, I may have dropped all or most of my mother's ways with words, but I still had her attitudes, her wariness, her unsureness of touch’.
- There was a bit of nervousness, a bit of unsureness, and that's not the way I want him to play for us.
- True, she did shoot a man, but even that seemingly militant act was marbled with vulnerability and unsureness.