Unreclaimed

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Not retrieved or renewed
2. Not having been brought back to a condition suitable for use or habitation
3. Remaining in a natural or original state without improvement or rehabilitation

Etymology: "Unreclaimed" is a simple formation: the prefix "un-", meaning "not," attached to "reclaimed," the past participle of "reclaim." The base verb "reclaim" comes from Old French "reclamer," meaning to call back or cry out against, and it passed into English with a sense of calling a hawk back to the falconer's fist. That falconry sense of recalling a bird helps explain why "reclaim" later came to mean bringing something back into a usable or cultivated state, as when wasteland is reclaimed for farming. Applied to land, an unreclaimed area is one that has never been brought under cultivation or made fit for use. The word is typically used of marshes, deserts, and wastes, and of things such as unreclaimed land or unreclaimed materials, which have been left in their raw state.

Synonyms: abandoned, unused, neglected, untapped, unutilized

Antonyms: reclaimed, utilized, developed, improved, cultivated