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  1. disinterested love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Free of bias and self-interest; impartial: "disinterested scientific opinion on fluorides in the water supply” ( Ellen R. Shell).
  2. adj. Not interested; indifferent: "supremely disinterested in all efforts to find a peaceful solution” ( C.L. Sulzberger).
  3. adj. Having lost interest.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Free from self-interest; unbiased by personal interest or private advantage; acting from unselfish motives.
  2. Not influenced or dictated by private advantage: as, a disinterested decision.
  3. Synonyms Unbiased, impartial, unbought, incorruptible, unselfish, dispassionate, magnanimous. Disinterested and uninterested are sometimes confounded in speech, though rarely in writing. A disinterested person takes part in or concerns himself about the affairs of others without regard to sell-interest, or to any personal benefit to be gained by his action; an uninterested one takes no interest in or is indifferent to the matter under consideration: as, a disinterested witness; an uninterested spectator.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Not influenced by regard to personal interest or advantage; free from selfish motive; having no relation of interest or feeling; not biased or prejudiced.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. unaffected by self-interest

Etymologies

  1. From dis- +‎ interested. (Wiktionary)

Examples

  • “He had never till now called upon me to make the shadow of a return for all his disinterested love -- _disinterested_, ah, was it so?”

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 327, January, 1843

  • “The first of these defines aesthetic appreciation as _disinterested interest, _ gratuitously identifying self-interest with the practical pursuit of advantages we have not yet got; and overlooking the fact that such appreciation implies enjoyment and is so far the very reverse of disinterested.”

    The Beautiful An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics

  • “By the term disinterested I mean detached from ulterior objects.”

    The Unity of Civilization

  • “Boyd had looked away, his expression disinterested.”

    Simon & Schuster: The Will

  • “Moreover, Mr Webb's point about what he calls disinterested management -- that is to say, the management of banks by officers whose remuneration bears no relation to the profit made on each piece of business transacted -- is one of the matters in which English banking seems likely at least to be modified.”

    War-Time Financial Problems

  • “-- Hence the value we attach, in the exercise of all the affections, to what we call disinterested conduct, -- to him who does good by stealth, or who performs acts of exalted justice, generosity, or forbearance, under circumstances which exclude every idea of a selfish motive, -- or when self-interest and personal feeling are strongly and obviously opposed to them.”

    The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings

  • “Congress has shown itself to be serially disinterested is such matters.”

    Matthew Yglesias » In the Long Run

  • “What we call disinterested, however, super-cats might call aimless.”

    This Simian World

  • “It may refer, for instance, to the state of being free of prejudice or bias, to being "disinterested" - a word that in turn means almost the opposite of "uninterested.”

    PTBC J-Log

  • “Jacob – disinterested is exactly the word I was groping for but couldn’t find thank you!”

    An Education « Tales from the Reading Room

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synonyms (4)

Words with the same meaning

  1. impartial
  1. uninterested
  1. indifferent
  1. unbiased

equivalents (1)

Other words for ‘disinterested’

  1. impartial

same context (11)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. unselfish
  2. sincere
  1. impartial
  2. humane
  1. enlighten
  2. courageous
  1. virtuous
  2. conscientious
  1. zealous
  2. candid
  1. chivalrous

rhymes (1)

Words with the same terminal sound

  1. interested

reverse dictionary (15)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. disinteressed
  2. disinterested
  3. uninterested
  1. interested
  2. indifferent
  3. disinterest
  1. disinterestedly
  2. disinterestedness
  3. impartial
  1. nirvana
  2. stateswoman
  3. statesman
  1. ax
  2. mysticism
  3. appraisement

tags (2)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. poor common usage
  1. often misused

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‘disinterested’ has been looked up 3131 times, loved by 1 person, added to 46 lists, commented on 2 times, and has a Scrabble score of 15.