Another article posted by Port Dickson Toastmasters Club.
Consider the following three sentences, all found via online search:
· "Unbeknownst to me, they had been planning my birthday all weekend."
· "Unbeknownst to most Americans, oil fields dot northern Afghanistan near its border with Turkmenistan."
· "You blamed us, when all of it was unbeknownst to us, and completely unintentional."
The word unbeknownst has an archaic or literary ring, but it's used with surprising frequency. Google turns up eight million examples.
Bryan Garner, in Garner's Modern American Usage, notes some disagreement among grammar gurus about the appropriateness of the word, and concludes by favoring unbeknown.
But even that option strikes me as pretentious. I would opt for the simpler unknown. That would make the first example above: "Unknown to me, they had been planning my birthday all weekend." Or, as an alternative: "Without my knowledge...."
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