Meaning & use
unharvested
Last updated
Meaning
adjectivenot comparable
Not yet gathered in from the fields; still standing or left in the ground.
Grammar: Describes a noun; it does not usually take 'very' or 'more'.
Heavy rain left the wheat unharvested for weeks.
The unharvested apples fell to the ground and rotted.
Farmers were forced to leave entire fields unharvested.
Common combinations
- leave something unharvested
- The storm forced them to leave the corn unharvested.
- unharvested crops
- Unharvested crops stood in the waterlogged fields.
- unharvested fields
- The unharvested fields stretched to the horizon.
- remain unharvested
- Much of the rice remained unharvested because of the floods.
Synonyms and how they differ
- uncropped
- Describes land not used for growing crops, not crops that are ready but not gathered.
- ungathered
- A more general word for things not collected; it can apply to fruit but also to other items.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: unharvested or unharvestable?
unharvested vs unharvestable
Means 'not able to be harvested', for example because the crop is too damaged; it is not the same as simply not yet harvested.
Practice
The rice was still ______ when the first frost arrived.
Choose one answer.
'Unharvested' means not yet gathered in, which fits the context of a crop still in the field. 'Harvesting' is an active verb form and would need a subject like 'the farmers were harvesting'; 'harvested' means already gathered, which contradicts the frost timing; 'harvestable' means able to be harvested, not that it hasn't been done.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “unharvested”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.