Unselected

Unselected is an adjective meaning not chosen or not selected. It describes something that has failed to be chosen from a set, or a state in which an option remains unchosen. The term is formed from un- plus selected and is used across fields to denote the absence of selection rather than a positive selection result.

In elections, competitions, and hiring, unselected candidates or options are those that were not chosen. The term is common in reporting results, where a slate of applicants may be narrowed down and several individuals are described as unselected. In research and surveys, unselected respondents or items may be excluded from analysis due to criteria, quality, or study design.

In information technology and data handling, unselected can describe UI states (a checkbox that is not checked) or data items that have not been chosen for a process. In data science, features or samples that are not selected by a feature selection algorithm may be referred to as unselected features or unselected data; these are typically excluded from model training or evaluation.

In evolutionary biology, the term can describe traits or alleles that are not currently favored by natural selection. An allele might be regarded as unselected if it does not affect fitness or if its effects are neutral over the timescale considered.

Overall, unselected serves as a general descriptor for elements that sit outside a selected subset, indicating an absence of selection rather than explicit rejection.