terra incognita
English
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin terra incognita (“unknown land”).
Noun
terra incognita
- Land that has never been explored or mapped; uncharted territory.
- 1832, John Pendleton Kennedy, “Introductory Epistle”, in Swallow Barn; or, A Sojourn in the Old Dominion, volume 1, page 5:
- Behold me now in the full career of my voyage of discovery, exploring the James River in the steamboat, on a clear, hot fifteenth of June, and looking with a sagacious perspicacity on the commonest sights of this terra incognita.
- 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 242:
- The gap that remains in the interior will no doubt be eventually bridged over by railway communication; and thus the great continent will no longer be a terra incognita to the general world, who have hitherto only heard of the splendid country through which the railway will pass, from the reports of telegraph constructionists and overlanding parties.
- 1922, Salt, Henry S., The Call of the Wildflower, London: George Allen & Unwin, OCLC 14023057, page 109:
- Unfortunately, this great rocky tableland has of late years become almost a terra incognita to the nature-lover, as a result of the agreement which was made, after prolonged controversy, between the Peak District Society and the grouse-shooting landlords, inasmuch as, while permitting the traveller to skirt the shoulders of the hill, it excluded him wholly from its summit.
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- By extension, ideas or concepts that have not yet been tried or explored.
- 2009, Gary Clark, Quadrant, November 2009, No. 461 (Volume LIII, Number 11), Quadrant Magazine Limited, page 9:
- The concept of the unconscious or an inner terra incognita, an unknown country of the psyche that precedes and predicates the Cartesian subject, the focal point of rational consciousness, was a revolutionary idea.
- 2016, Justin O. Schmidt, The Sting of the Wild, Johns Hopkins University Press, →ISBN, page 18:
- How commonly stinging insects encounter this problem is scientific terra incognita.
- 2009, Gary Clark, Quadrant, November 2009, No. 461 (Volume LIII, Number 11), Quadrant Magazine Limited, page 9:
Related terms
- incognition
- virgin territory
Translations
unknown land
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unexplored ideas
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