"known unknown" meaning in English

See known unknown in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: known unknowns [plural]
Etymology: Popularized by Donald Rumsfeld in 2002, though used much earlier. Head templates: {{en-noun}} known unknown (plural known unknowns)
  1. An uncertainty of known magnitude, consequence, structure, and probability characteristics; something that we know that we don't know. Wikipedia link: Donald Rumsfeld, There are known knowns Related terms: known known, unknown unknown, unknown known
    Sense id: en-known_unknown-en-noun-Uvd9~Q1r Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for known unknown meaning in English (0.9kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Popularized by Donald Rumsfeld in 2002, though used much earlier.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "known unknowns",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "known unknown (plural known unknowns)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An uncertainty of known magnitude, consequence, structure, and probability characteristics; something that we know that we don't know."
      ],
      "id": "en-known_unknown-en-noun-Uvd9~Q1r",
      "links": [
        [
          "uncertainty",
          "uncertainty"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "known known"
        },
        {
          "word": "unknown unknown"
        },
        {
          "word": "unknown known"
        }
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Donald Rumsfeld",
        "There are known knowns"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "known unknown"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Popularized by Donald Rumsfeld in 2002, though used much earlier.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "known unknowns",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "known unknown (plural known unknowns)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "known known"
    },
    {
      "word": "unknown unknown"
    },
    {
      "word": "unknown known"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An uncertainty of known magnitude, consequence, structure, and probability characteristics; something that we know that we don't know."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "uncertainty",
          "uncertainty"
        ]
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Donald Rumsfeld",
        "There are known knowns"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "known unknown"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-09 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (4d5d0bb and edd475d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.