Terra incognita (TER-uh in-KOG-nih-tuh) – Latin for “land” + “unknown” – is unknown territory; an unexplored region or new field of knowledge.
Example (as used by Ben Macintyre in a New York Times review of Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin): “The Amazon has always proved fertile soil for extravagant utopian fantasy. Victorian explorers, American industrialists, ideologues and missionaries all projected their dreams and ideas onto this terra incognita, this untamed wilderness of exotic possibility.”
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