1. Fey

　　Though fey is still used today to mean ‘giving an impression of vague unworldliness or mystery’, the adjective has a long, winding history. It’s earliest known uses relate to death, describing somebody who is fated to die or at the point of death. Unsurprisingly, this was considered pretty unlucky, and ‘unlucky’ is another sense of fey that dates to Old English. In the 19th century this became ‘disordered in mind like one about to die; possessing or displaying magical, fairylike, or unearthly qualities’.

　　尽管fey如今使用的意思是“留下模糊、超脱或神秘的印象”，这个形容词有一个漫长、曲折的历史。它最早的含义与死亡有关，描述人注定要死亡或垂死的。但这个词这被认为是非常不吉利的。老式英语中，“不幸”是fey的另一个含义。在19世纪演变为“神秘的、怪异的”。

　　2. Unseely

　　Many synonyms for unlucky follow the pattern of negating prefix + word meaning lucky. Somebody unseely is unlucky – indeed, ‘unfortunate, unhappy, miserable, wretched’.

　　很多不幸的同义词遵循的模式为：否定前缀+词义幸运。例如：unfortunate不幸, unhappy不开心, miserable悲惨的, wretched可怜的，同样是“不幸的”。

　　3. Unsele

　　Similarly, you could also describe a person as unsele, an adjective driving from sele which was a noun meaning ‘happiness, prosperity, good fortune’. Sele could also be added to other words to designate a favourable or proper time for something, such as barley-sele being the season for sowing barley.

　　你可以用unsele来描述一个人，形容词unsele由sele演变而来，sele为名词，表示“开心、好运”。Sele也可以添加到单词之后来表示“该到……时间”，例如barley-sele表示“该播种小麦的时间”。

　　4. Wanspeedy

　　Also found in Old English, this obsolete adjective comes from the noun wanspeed (‘ill-success; adversity, poverty’) which, in turn, combines wan- (a prefix used to express negation, approximately equivalent to the modern un-) and speed, which, in its earliest uses, meant ‘abundance’.

　　这个老式的英文单词来自名词wanspeed(其含义为：不幸，贫穷)，由wan和speed组成，其中wan为否定前缀(含义相当于un)，speed最早有“富足”的含义。

　　5. Ungracious

　　You’ll be familiar with ungracious meaning ‘not polite or friendly’; it literally means ‘without grace’, and so the common contemporary definition applies to one definition of grace. In this instance, using another definition of grace, it can mean ‘without fortune or luck’.

　　对于ungracious，你熟知的含义可能为“不礼貌的、不友好的”，grace常见的含义为“优雅”，因此，ungracious的字面含义翻译为“不优雅的”。在这个情况中使用的是grace的另外一种含义，ungracious表示“不幸”。

　　6. Unhappy

　　While an unlucky person probably would feel quite unhappy (in the modern sense), this use dates back to the original sense of happy to mean ‘favoured by good fortune; lucky’.

　　不幸的人大多会感到很不开心，这个用法可以追溯到happy原始含义：好运的、幸运的。

　　7. Unured

　　To be unured is to be unfortunate; the noun it derives from, eure, was once used to mean ‘luck’ but also any destiny or fate, whether good or bad. This comes via French from the same Latin root that gives bonheur, ‘happiness’.

　　To be unured即“不幸的”，这个名词源于eure，曾被用于表示幸运，但也表示命天命，而不表示好、坏。Eure来源于法语中的拉丁词汇bonheur(表示“幸福”)。

　　8. Unsonsy

　　In Scottish English and English from the north of England, you might have heard unsonsy used to mean ‘unlucky’ – and, indeed, to mean ‘unhandsome, plain’. Sonsy, unsurprisingly, means ‘lucky’ or ‘bringing luck’, as well as ‘attractive’.

　　从苏格兰语中，你可能听说过unsonsy之前的意思是“不幸的”，事实上，该词用来表示“不好看的，朴实无华的”。不出所料，Sonsy意味着“幸运”或者“带来好运”、或者“有吸引力”。

　　9. Mischancy

　　Mischancy originally meant ‘unlucky’, formed by derivation with mischance, and first found in the work of the poet and bishop Gavin Douglas (c1476-1522). You might still come across mischancy in Scottish and Irish English, although it is now usually used to mean ‘subject to chance or mischance; risky, dubious’ rather than ‘unlucky’.

　　Mischancy最初的意思是“不幸的”，由单词mischance(灾难)演变而来，首次使用是在诗人及主教加文·道格拉斯(c1476 - 1522)的作品中。在苏格兰和爱尔兰的英语中，你仍然可能遇到mischancy，虽然现在mischancy通常用来遭受某些偶然的、有风险的、可疑的事件而不是单指“不幸的”。

　　10. Stiff

　　Stiff has plenty of meanings, but if you hear the adjective in Australia or New Zealand, there’s a chance that it’s intended as a slang word meaning ‘unlucky’. Unlike most of the other words on this list, stiff is still in use with this sense –but you have to be in the right part of the world.

　　Stiff有很多含义,但是如果你在澳大利亚或新西兰听到这个形容词，有可能它作为一个俚语词使用，其意思为“不幸的”。不像之前的大多数单词，stiff的这种含义仍在使用中，但你需要在合适的地域使用(stiff表示不幸的用法只在部分地区存在)。

（编辑：何莹莹）