Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Having the attention diverted.
  • adjective Suffering conflicting emotions; distraught.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Perplexed; harassed or bewildered by opposing considerations.
  • Disordered in intellect; deranged; mad; frantic.
  • Synonyms Abstracted, Diverted, etc. See absent.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Mentally disordered; unsettled; mad.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Simple past tense and past participle of distract.
  • adjective having one's attention diverted; preoccupied
  • adjective distraught

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective having the attention diverted especially because of anxiety

Etymologies

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Examples

  • "It's not a coincidence," Gallagher points out, "that the term distracted once referred not just to a loss or dilution of attention but also to confusion, mental imbalance, and even madness."

    Ward Sutton: Paying Attention in the Information-Overload Age 2009

  • His face was wan and his expression distracted, his eyes darting from face to face.

    PRIVATE KATE BRIAN 1998

  • His face was wan and his expression distracted, his eyes darting from face to face.

    PRIVATE KATE BRIAN 1998

  • He smiled wide while reaching to his waist, and his expression distracted Chekov just long enough that he didn’t see the disruptor until the Prastorian had fired it at him, point blank, right into his chest.

    Mudd in Your Eye Jerry Oltion 1990

  • He smiled wide while reaching to his waist, and his expression distracted Chekov just long enough that he didn’t see the disruptor until the Prastorian had fired it at him, point blank, right into his chest.

    Mudd in Your Eye Jerry Oltion 1990

  • He smiled wide while reaching to his waist, and his expression distracted Chekov just long enough that he didn’t see the disruptor until the Prastorian had fired it at him, point blank, right into his chest.

    Mudd in Your Eye Jerry Oltion 1990

  • I'm not sure keeping yourself distracted is going to get you to the point where you forget the fact that are not actually ingesting caffeine.

    Beat Caffeine Addiction, Then Stay Awake With Placebos | Lifehacker Australia 2009

  • A note on style – the parenthetical asides sprinkled throughout distracted from the story.

    CODE MUSTARD • by Chris Allinotte 2009

  • I was distracted from the article by the stool, then distracted from the stool by Natalie Goldberg.

    Deadline to meet? Go clean that oven…. « Write Anything 2010

  • And last night I got distracted from the baseball by some good books from the library (something is wrong with me), including the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe.

    Baseball vs. literature Joel Achenbach 2010

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