Unanswered means not responded to or not resolved. When a question goes unanswered, nobody provides a reply. When you raise your hand in class but the teacher doesn't call on you, your question remains unanswered. When a friend doesn't text you back, your message sits unanswered in their inbox.

The word often carries a feeling of incompleteness or frustration. Scientists work on unanswered questions about how the universe began or whether life exists on other planets. These mysteries remain unanswered because we don't yet have enough information to solve them. A phone call might go unanswered because the person didn't hear it ring, or a letter might go unanswered because it never arrived.

Sometimes people deliberately leave things unanswered. A teacher might let a rhetorical question hang unanswered in the air, expecting students to think about it rather than blurt out an answer. But usually, when something important goes unanswered, it means there's unfinished business: a problem still to solve, a conversation still to complete, or knowledge still to discover.