unresolved

Unresolved is an adjective used to describe something that has not been resolved, settled, or concluded. It can refer to a state of ongoing uncertainty, such as an unanswered question, an unfinalized decision, or an unresolved conflict. In law enforcement and legal contexts, an unresolved case or unsolved crime remains open or unsolved due to lack of evidence or unresolved issues. In philosophy and science, unresolved questions are those for which consensus has not been reached or for which further investigation is required.

In culture and media, unresolved is commonly employed as a thematic motif and as a title to convey mystery, ambiguity, or open-ended conclusions. Because there is no single canonical work titled “Unresolved,” the usage spans multiple genres and media, including music, film, literature, and television, where the term signals threads of inquiry that invite interpretation rather than definitive closure.

In linguistics, unresolved describes certain syntactic or semantic elements that have not been fully integrated into a system or phenomena that lack a complete explanation. In information theory and computer science, problems may be described as unresolved when there are no known algorithms or sufficient data to reach a definitive result.

See also: unsolved, unresolved questions, open problem.