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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
unwary
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ For a moment Obispal was unwary and he knows it.
▪ His idiosyncratic usage is at once fascinating for analysis and a warning against making unwary generalisations about lyric poetry.
▪ In truth the government of Danzig had become a labyrinth sown with pits for the unwary.
▪ It looks almost like a cluster, and I have known unwary observers to confuse it with the Pleiades.
▪ Many unwary people were summarily dismissed for what they had said.
▪ Such conditions led to areas of swamp which were a natural trap for unwary animals which ventured to the river to drink.
▪ The unwary movement caused her foot to slip on the footpath made muddy by the overnight rain.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Unwary

Unwary \Un*wa"ry\, a. [Cf. Unware.]

  1. Not vigilant against danger; not wary or cautious; unguarded; precipitate; heedless; careless.

  2. Unexpected; unforeseen; unware. [Obs.]
    --Spenser.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
unwary

by 1570s, possibly late 14c., from un- (1) "not" + wary (adj.). Old English had unwær "incautious," unwærlic. Related: Unwarily.

Wiktionary
unwary

a. 1 lack caution as a result of naïveté or inexperience 2 unprepared; not watchful

WordNet
unwary

adj. not alert to danger or deception; "the shrieks of unwary animals taken by surprise"; "some thieves prey especially on unwary travelers"; "seduce the unwary reader into easy acquiescence"- O.J.Campbell [ant: wary]

Usage examples of "unwary".

And who cared about werewolves infecting the unwary so long as you could get a good manicure or acupuncture treatment?

French at Bruges, or even a few words of broken English, if some unwary stranger from across the Channel is rash enough to venture on doing business with these sharp-witted, plausible folk.

Twinkle-Toes Talbotts of the world are unleashing a plague of lead-footed smiling robots on the dance floors of America, robots who then go on to teach the Twinkle-Toes method of dance to their unwary friends and defenseless children.

Jesus Christ and that of the foundress of Christian Science are not one and the same method, although called by the name of faith they appear at first sight to the unwary to be identical.

Norm Ballard, a second-rate Ed Gein who liked to waylay unwary travelers who happened by his out-of-the-way Nebraska farm.

There is something fearful in knowing that beneath your feet, as you wander in these ruined places, exist gulphs of darkness, into which a false step amongst treacherous bushes and weeds might precipitate the unwary.

I could have had the hunters pole their floatblinds to a place of their own choosing, but the fen was riddled with quickmud cysts that would pull down both pole and poler, populated by dracula ticks the size of blood-filled balloons that liked to drop on moving objects from overhead branches, decorated with hanging ribbon snakes, which looked precisely like chalma fronds to the unwary, and rife with fighting gar that could bite through a finger.

In archways and sottoporticos, thick masses of it lay like predators, waiting for the unwary.

If I quested out, I could sense Nighteyes prowling about, ever alert for the unwary mouse.

For the Psychosphere guarded its secrets jealously, and the toll it would exact from unwary explorers might be devastating!

I refuse to deposit this work in the royal archives or in any scriptorium accessible to the public, I can put it where it will never by remotest chance assault the eyes of the unwary.

Nay, Shelyid, the unwary seizer of still-warded relics finds himself drawn into the relic itself, there to spend eternity in the utter boredom of relichood.

Many men knew that such a chamber must exist somewhere in either the Lagore Palace complex or in the Tara Palace, but only a mere handful of his closest advisers knew exactly where it was, and only three men in all of Irelandhimself, his eldest son and presumed heir, and Baron Slane, his chief ministerknew how to gain entry to it or safely exit it once they had entered, for the ancient builders had sown the way with deadly traps to ensnare the unwanted and unwary.

Aubert de Vitry re-translated the work into French, but omitted about a fourth of the matter, and this mutilated and worthless version is frequently purchased by unwary bibliophiles.

Saul had borrowed in the changed sense that we used the word a box of chalks which an unwary warehouseman had left too close to a window.