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”).

• Audio (US)

  (file)

nameless (not comparable)

1. Not having a name; unnamed.
2. Whose name is unknown; unidentified or obscure; anonymous.
3. Unable to be described or expressed.
   • 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.

• namelessly
• namelessness

• 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 (2023), “name-it-not n.”, in Green's Dictionary of Slang

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