wool-gathering

• ““Come, Doctor, I beg your pardon, but your wits are fairly gone a wool-gathering; it was I invited you to dinner, up at the inn yonder, and not you me.””

  Saint Ronan's Well

• “Skipping thus lightly over a matter of such consequence, the thoughts of the hare-brained boy went a wool-gathering after more agreeable topics.”

  The Abbot

• “Tibullus, stulti praetereunt dies, their wits are a wool-gathering.”

  Anatomy of Melancholy

• “Manichaeos, his wits were a wool-gathering, as they say, and his head busied about other matters, when he perceived his error, he was much [1994] abashed.”

  Anatomy of Melancholy

• “For a minute, perhaps, my mind was wool-gathering.”

  The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells

• “I cried incredulously, for my wits were still wool-gathering.”

  Greenmantle

• “You realize, of course, I'm engaging in a bit of wool-gathering sport.”

  Dylanology.

• “Were you to shepherd too long your wits would certainly go wool-gathering, even if you were not tempted to bleat.”

  A First Year in Canterbury Settlement

• “Mr Robarts had come round to the generally accepted idea that Mr Crawley had obtained possession of the cheque illegally — acquitting his friend in his own mind of theft, simply by supposing that he was wool-gathering when the cheque came in his way.”

  The Last Chronicle of Barset

• “Gerasimovitch, turning to Nekhludoff, “and your thoughts must have been wool-gathering to let the thing pass.””

  Resurrection

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