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absent-minded

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: absentminded

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From absent mind +‎ -ed, meaning “having an absent mind”.

Pronunciation

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  • (US) IPA(key): /ˌæb.sn̩tˈmaɪn.dɪd/
  • Audio (US):(file)

Adjective

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absent-minded (comparative more absent-minded, superlative most absent-minded) (possessional)

  1. Absent in mind; often preoccupied; forgetful or careless due to distraction; easily distracted. [First attested in the mid 19th century.][1]
    Coordinate terms: mindless, unmindful
    It took the absent-minded man twenty minutes to find his glasses on top of his head.
    • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Loomings”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 2:
      Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries — stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region.
    • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The Mast-Head”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 175:
      For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men […] .
      Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young philosophers to task […] , as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise.
      Perhaps they [whales] were [scarce]; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity[.]
    • 1900, Kenneth Grahame, The Golden Age, page 110:
      His figure was bent in apologetic protest. "I ask a thousand pardons, sir," he said; "I am really so very absent-minded."

Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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  1. ^ Lesley Brown, editor-in-chief, William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, editors (2002), “absent-minded”, in The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 5th edition, Oxford; New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 9.
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