Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Having or showing no emotion; unfeeling: "Mass-culture banality is killing our souls and making everybody affectless” ( New Yorker).
Wiktionary
- adj. Lacking or not showing emotion.
Etymologies
- affect + -less (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Strange ... during the McCain announcement, which I watched online, I was talking with a friend over the phone & mentioned that Palin's older daughters seemed kind of affectless and unhappy (or that was the vibe I got anyway).”
“Writer-director Bruno Dumont's latest film is a typically flat, affectless work in which you spend much of the film puzzling out exactly who is who and what is going on.”
“It may strike some as affectless, but anyone familiar with Marines will likely recognize in Bacon the almost exaggerated courtesy officers use when officially out in public.”
“A chorus of similar young men and women narrate these overlapping stories, and all share an affectless monotone, whether they're describing having an affair with a teacher, like April in her self-titled story, or gang-raping a girl, like Roberto in "China town.”
“Given that finally we don't know which person he really is, the original more affectless reaction seems the right one, but many readers might find this unregulated drift in our disposition toward the character unsettling.”
“At times he comes across as a lettered, affectless Jeremy Clarkson France's car dependency gives the lie to "that universally preached, seldom practised, utterly trite and entirely unrealistic doctrine of sustainability," says Meades, with as much feeling as if he were reading out a recipe for crêpes suzette.”
The Guardian: TV review: Jonathan Meades on France; Bouncers
“The tender response of the generally affectless Oliver Ewan McGregor to his late father's grief-stricken pooch terrier in "Beginners" is more revealing than a Rorschach.”
“In an ominous drumbeat of affectless and repetitive sentences You were not alone, poor, alcoholic, abandoned.”
“And a male photographer wants just about every female around — including the former star model ineptly played by an affectless Mischa Barton.”
“It is, however, unmistakable in the affectless but cumulatively affecting chunks of prose that serially approximate the aimless, one-thing-after-another succession of experiences that make up the narrator's life.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘affectless’.
-
-more or -less
Words ending with *more or *less, more or less. Many of theses terms also appear on the list The -less Said, which see.
schemaless, unless, useless, guileless, wireless, regardless, homeless, endless, nevertheless, countless, jobless, doubtless and 434 more...
-
Hitch Words
Words from the lexicon of Christopher Hitchens
propinquity, fratricide, factitious, vitiate, sectarianism, ostensible, atavistic, sephardic, doyen, palpable, encephalitic, fastidious and 188 more...
-
The -less Said...
hopeless, bootless, groundless, luckless, artless, feckless, hapless, joyless, useless, penniless, childless, peerless and 310 more...
-
Numbrella ☂
Unfeeling; comfortably dry.
"Ella, ella, ella..."schmaltzy, nonchalant, joyless, aloof, lifeless, indifferent, dead, uninspired, lethargic, preoccupied, distant, removed and 50 more...
-
plumpesDenken's Words
refulgent, casuistry, scrofulous, syllogism, peristaltic, oleaginously, paratactic, pejoration, quietus, ingeminated, postlapsarian, indurated and 24 more...
-
My List
I don't know how to favorite words.
deciduous, inflammatory, mock, foundry, aspersions, caveat, ennui, acrimony, prodigious, effusive, Desiccant, loadstar and 13 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for affectless.
plumpesdenken "His prose style is disinvested in -- and as affectless as -- his protagonists." John Bailey on DeLillo's Falling Man Jul 7, 2007