Dictionary

terra incognita en · NOUN

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin terra incognita (“unknown land”).

Meanings

1. Land that has never been explored, mapped, or surveyed.
   • It is needless to say how much interest attaches to the far larger unknown portion of this great island, the greatest terra incognita that still remains for the naturalist to explore, and the only region where altogether new and unimagined forms of life may perhaps be found. 1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., page 428:
   • 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. 1832, John Pendleton Kennedy, “Introductory Epistle”, in Swallow Barn; or, A Sojourn in the Old Dominion, volume 1, page 5:
   • 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. 1922, Henry S. Salt, The Call of the Wildflower, London: George Allen & Unwin, →OCLC, page 109:
   • 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. 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 242:
2. (broadly) Ideas or concepts that have not yet been tried or explored.
   • 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. 2009, Gary Clark, Quadrant, November 2009, No. 461 (Volume LIII, Number 11), Quadrant Magazine Limited, page 9
   • How commonly stinging insects encounter this problem is scientific terra incognita. 2016, Justin O. Schmidt, The Sting of the Wild, Johns Hopkins University Press, →ISBN, page 18:

Antonyms

home ground · homeland

Coordinates

terra firma

Relateds

terra firma · incognition · virgin territory · unknown quantity · parts unknown · frontier

Synonyms

uncharted territory · uncharted territory · uncharted water

Translations (23)

fi terra incognita (unexplored ideas) · da ukendt land (unknown land) · ja 未知の国 (unknown land) · nl terra incognita (unexplored ideas) · da ukendt land (unexplored ideas) · pl biała plama (unknown land) · de unbekanntes Land (unknown land) · fi terra incognita (unknown land) · ru неизве́стная земля́ (unknown land) · ru те́рра инко́гнита (unknown land) · da uudforsket land (unexplored ideas) · nl terra incognita (unknown land) · da uudforsket land (unknown land) · fi tuntematon maa (unknown land) · fr terre inconnue (unknown land) · el άγνωστη γη (unknown land) · az Yəcuc və Məcuc (unknown land) · fr terra incognita (unknown land) · la terra incognita (unknown land) · de Terra incognita (unknown land) · fi tuntematon alue (unexplored ideas) · cmn 未知領域 /未知领域 (unknown land) · pl biała plama (unexplored ideas)