An action done without being triggered or caused by someone else's behavior; happening without a good reason.
From un- (not) + provoked (past tense of provoke, from Latin provocare meaning to challenge). The prefix negates the action of being provoked, creating a word meaning 'without provocation' that emerged in English around the 1600s.
In legal and ethical discussions, 'unprovoked' carries serious weight—it often determines whether an action is considered justified or not. An unprovoked attack is seen as morally worse than a response to someone else's aggression, which shows how language itself encodes our values.
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