In reality, he and been off in Argentina with his girlfriend, unbeknown st to his wife. Unbeknown st to him, the orb contains an Infinity Stone, which holds within it the power to destroy entire planets. Unbeknown st to Rullo, Scotto had not only been caught by the feds but agreed to cooperate with them.

Navigation menu


Did You Know?
Add unbeknownst to one of your lists below, or create a new one. Improve your vocabulary with English Vocabulary in Use from Cambridge. Learn the words you need to communicate with confidence. Driven or bone idle?
Test your vocabulary with our fun image quizzes
To save this word, you'll need to log in. Unbeknownst derives from beknown, an obsolete synonym of known. But for a word with a straightforward history, unbeknownst and its older and less common variant unbeknown have created quite a flap among usage commentators. Despite widespread use including appearances in the writings of Charles Dickens, A. Housman, and E. White , the two words have been called everything from "obsolete" to "vulgar. Examples of unbeknownst in a Sentence unbeknownst to me, my mother was planning a party Recent Examples on the Web Hayley Peterson, who co-wrote a University of Albany study about terrorism amid the pandemic, said extremist groups already reside in the country unbeknownst to much of the public. Send us feedback.
By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Cookie Policy , Privacy Policy , and our Terms of Service. It only takes a minute to sign up. I've used "beknownst" and "unbeknownst" a couple times but I never really bothered to look it up until now. But it's not in most of the online dictionaries websites I frequent. I'm under the impression that this word is old school; if so, is it still appropriate to use? Or am I better off using some other word that means the same thing? Technically there is no such word as 'beknownst' other than as a back-formation of 'unbeknownst' unbeknown exists and in fact pre-dates unbeknownst. Beknown also exists.