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involuntary

adjectiveattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ɪnˈvɒl.ən.tɹi//
  • United States//ɪnˈvɑ.lənˌtɛɹ.i//
  • Canada//ɪnˈvɒl.ənˌtɛɹ.i//
  • Australia//ɪnˈvɔl.ən.tɹi//

Without intention; unintentional.

adjective

  1. 1

    Without intention; unintentional.

  2. 2

    Not voluntary or willing; contrary or opposed to explicit will or desire; unwilling.

    He found himself the involuntary witness in the trial.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Italic *n̥- Latin in-bor. Middle English in- English in- Middle English voluntarie English voluntary English involuntary From in- + voluntary, from Late Latin involontarius, from in + volontarius.

Forms

comparative
more involuntary
superlative
most involuntary
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).