UNWITTING in sample sentences

A woman a bit older than Mae, slurring and holding a Manhattan, expressed it best, though unwittingly: How, she asked, spilling her drink but with eyes sharp, How do we get the inevitable sooner?

Dave Eggers -- The Circle

What if the balloons that hunted us on the beach were based here, and we’d unwittingly stumbled into a nest of wights?

Ransom Riggs -- Hollow City

Now that the comfort stations were run under military ordinances and the women not professionals but rather those who had unwittingly enlisted or been conscripted into the wartime women’s volunteer corps, to contribute and sacrifice as all did, the expectation was that the various diseases would be kept more or less in check.

Chang-rae Lee -- A Gesture Life

"The unwitting femme fatale," Denny murmured, and Amanda gave a little hiss of amusement.

Anne Tayler -- A Spool of Blue Thread

On the last day of February 1941, a dapper little Gestapo man comes to him with the news that the unwitting Dupont has tried to use the forged tickets.

Anthony Doerr -- All the Light We Cannot See

It was during a session of this game that Prophet electrified the class and held it unwittingly in the palm of his hand for several staggering moments.

Pat Conroy -- The Water is Wide

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Kids who had unwittingly put themselves in the line of fire for me.

Alexandra Bracken -- The Darkest Minds

And I realized to my delight that, however unwittingly, I had already put together the first part of the frame to surround this tragic landscape: my dog-eared train ride, the passage I had cherished and reread with such daft absorption, would now represent the arrival in the town of our heroine’s body, disinterred from the potter’s field in New York and shipped in a baggage car for final burial in the city of her birth.

William Styron -- Sophie’s Choice

I felt a little shaky at the thought, as well as at the knowledge that I had unwittingly exposed him to such danger.

Diana Gabaldon -- Outlander

Am I unwittingly the face of the hoped-for rebellion?

Suzanne Collins -- Catching Fire

Eventually she would have to tell David what she had unwittingly done.

Scott Westerfeld -- Uglies

Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling and unwitting participants.

Khaled Hosseini -- And The Mountains Echoed

He will pay dearly if he unwittingly slips to beta.

Yann Martel -- Life of Pi

But I was pathetic, a blundering liability to my own team, always in the way of an opportune pass or unwittingly blocking an open lane.

Khaled Hosseini -- The Kite Runner

Borgenicht, in fact, unwittingly captures this poignancy in his memoir, which was published in 1 9 4 2 .

Malcolm Gladwell -- Outliers

His mother died in the attempt to save him — and unwittingly provided him with a protection I admit I had not foreseen.

J.K. Rowling -- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Then, all unwitting that he has awakened Mrs. Hubbard, he slips out through the other door into the corridor.

Agatha Christie -- Murder On The Orient Express

He felt that he had unwittingly stuck his hand into The Great Wasps’ Nest of Life.

Stephen King -- The Shining

Rather than cherish that medal, Madame, you should regard it as a symbol of your unwitting complicity with this despot who worked to death and brutalized and eventually exterminated thousands and thousands of African peoples.

Alice Walker -- The Color Purple

I saw the mother of Oidipous, Epikaste, whose great unwitting deed it was to marry her own son.

Homer -- The Odyssey

The driver didn’t notice a thing and, unwitting, drove off up the exit ramp.

Stieg Larsson -- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

water-dwellers that looked like scaly monkeys, with webbed hands itching to strangle unwitting waders in their ponds.

J.K. Rowling -- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Then he talked harshly to the unwitting culprit, and in his voice there was nothing but godlike wrath.

Jack London -- White Fang

And like any unwitting animal that was well and truly caught, Josie could escape only by leaving a piece of herself behind.

Jodi Picoult -- Nineteen Minutes

I learned these lessons in alchemy, but you will find them invaluable in this new world you’ve unwittingly wandered into.

Micheal Scott -- The Alchemyst

Not so deep beneath the earth were the warrens of the wild rabbits I loved, the bunnies that ate the vegetables and flowers in the neighborhood nearby and that sometimes, unwittingly, brought poison home to their dens.

Alice Sebold -- The Lovely Bones

Epilogue THE PILOT who landed so suddenly in the lake was a fur buyer mapping Cree trapping camps for future buying runs, drawn by Brian when he unwittingly turned on the emergency transmitter and left it going.

Gary Paulsen -- Hatchet

Our discipline demands therefore that we talk to no one and that we avoid situations in which information might be given away unwittingly.

Ralph Ellison -- Invisible Man

The Chilean farmers who unwittingly risked their lives were ignorant peasants; the government of Chile had an economic crisis to worry about; and the American authorities had no jurisdiction.

Michael Crichton -- Jurassic Park

Raskolnikov had unwittingly worked a revolution in his brain on a certain point and had made up his mind for him conclusively.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- Crime and Punishment

I must have projected the thought unwittingly, for she came in, somewhat coldly: ’It’s a pity you didn’t do a little more thinking and a little less sleeping.

John Wyndham -- The Chrysalids

The possibilities — had Rabban unwittingly given House Harkonnen its ultimate weapon?

Frank Herbert -- Dune

I was not at all remorseful for having unwittingly set those other branches of the Pocket family to the poor arts they practised; because such littlenesses were their natural bent, and would have been evoked by anybody else, if I had left them slumbering.

Charles Dickens -- Great Expectations

Of this offence Buck was unwittingly guilty, and the first knowledge he had of his indiscretion was when Sol-leks whirled upon him and slashed his shoulder to the bone for three inches up and down.

Jack London -- The Call of the Wild

The question that still remains is: Did he do so wittingly or unwittingly?

Stephen King -- Carrie

But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory!

Herman Melville -- Moby Dick

"Dearest, dearest Valentine," exclaimed he, "forgive me if I have offended you, and forget the words I spoke if they have unwittingly caused you pain."

Alexandre Dumas -- The Count of Monte Cristo

The name agreed upon for the child was Eugenie Victoria, but that afternoon Melanie unwittingly bestowed a name that clung, even as "Pittypat" had blotted out all memory of Sarah Jane.

Margaret Mitchell -- Gone with the Wind

But she had not dared to sleep, for fear she would kick off the blanket and give herself away—give the Tucks away—unwittingly.

Natalie Babbitt -- Tuck Everlasting

The girl, it turned out, was an unwitting intermediary between two communities, a human sacrifice who allowed the festivities to go forward with no uttered ill will.

David Guterson -- Snow Falling on Cedars

I had accepted, unwittingly and by default, the tenet that ideas were of no consequence to one’s existence, to one’s work, to reality, to this earth-as if ideas were not the province of reason, but of that mystic faith which I despised.

Ayn Rand -- Atlas Shrugged

But no hint to that effect escaping him and his countenance becoming more overcast, I suddenly remembered that I might have been all wrong, and was perhaps playing the fool unwittingly; and I began gently to withdraw myself from his arms — but he eagerly snatched me closer.

Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre

TEIRESIAS I say thou livest with thy nearest kin In infamy, unwitting in thy shame.

Sophocles -- Oedipus the King

Unsure how to act in the company of a divine presence, this living reincarnation of an ancient and illustrious lama, I was terrified of unwittingly giving offense or committing some irredeemable faux pas.

Jon Krakauer -- Into Thin Air

The attack might have succeeded had it not been for the fact that they unwittingly chose to stage the attack right outside a compartment full of DA members, who saw what was happening through the glass and rose as one to rush to Harry’s aid.

J.K. Rowling -- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

For it seems less evil to counsel another man to break troth than to do so oneself, especially if one sees a friend bound unwitting to his own harm.

J.R.R. Tolkien -- The Two Towers