unfinished business
66
3.7
- noun
:
asunto pendiente
- We've got unfinished business.
- a piece of unfinished business
So obviously unfinished business for you, Christian.
- So obviously unfinished business for you, Christian.
- That's them carrying some piece of their of their own unfinished business.
- My first brain is like, OK, yeah, someone has unfinished business.
- The the hunger with Tommy, I'll always be there because he's a fighter and I'm his father and I will keep him hungry because he's got unfinished business.
Examples
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There's still some unfinished business to take care of.
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After the meeting, we realized there was still some unfinished business to address before the project was completed.
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So obviously unfinished business for you, Christian.
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Like something is keeping them here, some unfinished business, you could say.
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- It looks like we got some unfinished business here.
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I think I know what my unfinished business is.
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Maybe I do have a little unfinished business.
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Rich: I had to take care of some unfinished business.
Fiction book (1999) -
So there was a sense of course always of some sort of unfinished business during my childhood.
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Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some unfinished business to take care of.
Synonyms
57
3.7
An unfinished small task or detail that still needs doing
41
3.4
A project that is not finished yet
To let work or tasks build up without being done
Antonyms
How Complete
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'work or matters not completed' is directly compositional from 'unfinished' (not complete) + 'business' (matter/affair), so a B1 learner who knows the two words can readily infer the phrase. This is a standard ADJ+N noun phrase construction found cross-linguistically, making the expression clearly transparent.
Etymology
Unfinished business may come from the simple picture of a shop or office where the business is left half-done—tools, papers and orders still on the table, so the work is unfinished. So it now means 'work or tasks that are not yet completed'.