uncertainty

[ uhn-sur-tn-tee ]

/ ʌnˈsɜr tn ti /

the state of being uncertain; doubt; hesitancy: His uncertainty gave impetus to his inquiry.

an instance of uncertainty, doubt, etc.

unpredictability; indeterminacy; indefiniteness.

Origin of uncertainty

1350–1400; Middle English uncerteynte; see un-¹, certainty

1 hesitation, irresolution, indecision, ambivalence.

New York blinks in the face of uncertainty and bans hydraulic fracturing.

New York’s Conservative Fracking Ban |Jay Michaelson |December 20, 2014 |DAILY BEAST
But for me, this admittance of uncertainty and doubts grounds Serial in reality.

Adnan Killed Her! No, Jay Did It! Serial’s Uncertain, True-to-Reality End |Emily Shire |December 18, 2014 |DAILY BEAST
His Canon camera dangled by his side and the feeling of uncertainty over what he could now report punctuated everything he said.

Turkey Arrests Journalists in Crackdown |Jesse Rosenfeld |December 14, 2014 |DAILY BEAST
Kundera sees fiction as a realm of many partial truths, its only certainty “the wisdom of uncertainty.”

The Birth of the Novel |Nick Romeo |November 27, 2014 |DAILY BEAST

If the certainty of the wisdom of uncertainty is itself uncertain, the force of the definition crumbles by logical standards.

The Birth of the Novel |Nick Romeo |November 27, 2014 |DAILY BEAST
The person stopped where the road branched off, as if in uncertainty which to take.

Hurricane Hurry |W.H.G. Kingston
The one, rich and full though accompanied perhaps by pain and even denial at times; the other fraught with uncertainty.

When Dreams Come True |Ritter Brown
This uncertainty seems to indicate a certain superficiality in the ordinary empirical way of looking at evolution.

On the Ethics of Naturalism |William Ritchie Sorley
This uncertainty made a most feverish moment on board the Proserpine, as she came up fast toward the headland.

The Wing-and-Wing |J. Fenimore Cooper
The mere admission of such changes may suffice to indicate the doubt and uncertainty which attend enquiries of this nature.

Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. |Sir James George Frazer

uncertainty

/ (ʌnˈsɜːtəntɪ) /

Also called: uncertainness the state or condition of being uncertain

an uncertain matter, contingency, etc