unexpected
He went on holiday to Spain, where he died unexpectedly.
Her request won an unexpectedly large amount of support.
He retired unexpectedly from work in July.
Unexpectedly, nobody complained.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Not expected or planned
abrupt end
abrupt halt
abruptly
abruptness
ad hoc
inadvertence
inadvertency
inadvertent
inadvertently
inconceivable
sharpness
sine die
spirit
spontaneity
spontaneous
unsuspected
untimely
untoward
unwilled
unwitting

Examples of unexpectedly

unexpectedly
Not unexpectedly, they tended to report that the correction of linguistic slips is done mainly as they write.
This accessory atrioventricular connection extending across the atrioventricular node was found in an infant dying suddenly and unexpectedly.
Voicing assimilation unexpectedly fails to apply in the context /t+d/, and epenthesis unexpectedly goes out of its way to apply in exactly this context.
There's something quietly satisfying about rescuing fine articles from obscurity and running together quite different arguments unexpectedly.
Unexpectedly, the quality of the relationship also associated with age, but to a lesser degree than the other two dimensions.
For certain localities where combined figures are given for infants at birth visits and repeat visits, the percentage using long-tube bottles is, not unexpectedly, smaller.
The result was, not unexpectedly, unorganised and quite unlike classical diatonic melodies.
Not entirely unexpectedly, the articulation by some of self-concept\\image entailed express or implied criticisms of tenants.
It's a striking, if abstentionist, coup de théâtre, which in this dehumanized context is unexpectedly moving.
This would create a desire to change the musical structure unexpectedly, and so appears a serious time management problem.
Unexpectedly, parasitized weevils had the lowest mortality rates (prior to larval parasitoid emergence).
Unexpectedly high (low) rates of growth represent improvements (declines) over recent trends that voters could logically attribute to effective (detrimental) government macroeconomic policies.
While the excited crowd gathered round, suddenly and unexpectedly there was a new vortex of the festival, verging on the threshold of a challenge.
In most instances only community-acquired infections are shown in detail, since nosocomial infections do occur unexpectedly.
Unexpectedly, night-time sleep is often disturbed with frequent awakening.
See all examples of unexpectedly
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.