nameless

From Middle English nameles, equivalent to name +‎ -less. Cognate with Dutch naamloos (“nameless”), German namenlos (“nameless”), Danish navnløs (“nameless”), Swedish namnlös (“nameless”), Icelandic nafnlaus (“nameless, anonymous”).

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nameless (not comparable)

1. Not having a name.

   Synonym: unnamed

   Environmental DNA analysis suggests that the number of species of bacteria that remain nameless to date may well be on the order of many thousands.

2. Whose name is unknown; unidentified or obscured.

   Synonyms: anonymous, deidentified

   The culprits shall remain nameless here, as some names have been changed to protect the guilty; just don't let it happen again.

3. Unable to be described or expressed.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:indescribable

   a nameless unease

   a nameless fear

   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, “The Plain of Kôr”, in She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC, page 126:

     Minute grew into minute, and still there was no sign of life, nor did the curtain move; but I felt the gaze of the unknown being sinking through and through me, and filling me with a nameless terror, till the perspiration stood in beads upon my brow.

4. (dated, of a child) Illegitimate.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:illegitimate

   • 1953, James Baldwin, “Elizabeth’s Prayer”, in Go Tell It on the Mountain, New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Co., published October 1970, →OCLC, part 2 (The Prayers of the Saints), page 175:

     He said that he would cherish her until the grave, and that he would love her nameless son as though he were his own flesh.

• innominate
• no-name

the nameless

1. (obsolete) Vulva.

   Synonyms: name-it-not; see also Thesaurus:vulva

   • 1896, John Stephen Farmer, “Hérison”, in Vocabula Amatoria, page 156:

     Hérison, m. The female pudendum; ‘the nameless’.

• Jonathon Green (2024) “name-it-not n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang

• Sleemans, lameness, maleness, maneless, meanless, salesmen