Definitions

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

  • adjective Lacking intelligence or good sense; foolish.
  • adjective Having no intelligent purpose, meaning, or direction.
  • adjective Giving or showing little attention or care; heedless.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Without mind; wanting power of thought; brutish; stupid; inanimate.
  • Unmindful; thoughtless; heedless; careless.
  • Not exhibiting or denoting thought; void of sense; irrational; inane: as, “mindless activity,”

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

  • adjective Not indued with mind or intellectual powers; stupid; unthinking.
  • adjective Unmindful; inattentive; heedless; careless.

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

  • adjective Showing a lack of forethought or sense.
  • adjective Having no sensible meaning or purpose.
  • adjective Heedless.
  • adjective of a thing done Overly repetitive and unchallenging.
  • adjective Lacking a mind.

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

  • adjective not mindful or attentive
  • adjective requiring little mental effort
  • adjective devoid of intelligence
  • adjective not marked by the use of reason
  • adjective lacking the thinking capacity characteristic of a conscious being

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English myndeles, from Old English myndlēas ("foolish, senseless"), equivalent to mind +‎ -less.

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Examples

  • Pink says it examines what she calls mindless consumerism, how young girls are so celeb obsessed they ` ll do anything to talk like stars, dress like stars and be like stars.

    CNN Transcript Apr 10, 2006 2006

  • At the same time, more people are indulging in what they called "mindless munching" at home, with sweet-eating outside the home decreasing by 16% over the past year.

    WalesOnline - Home WalesOnline 2011

  • Libiran said he is never at ease being compared with big-budget Filipino directors specialising in what he calls mindless, song-and-dance movie formulas that rake in millions.

    Arab Times Kuwait English Daily 2010

  • "Red Nails" comes to mind as having a great setting - a vast ruined, enclosed city through which the decadent survivors of a great civilization hunt each other in mindless blood-lust.

    MIND MELD: The Best Sword & Sorcery Stories 2010

  • Daniel Smith: The only thing we can reasonably conclude is that the intentionality we observe in mindless nature is the product of a mind that exists outside of nature.

    De Facto Intelligent Design in Biology 2010

  • The only thing we can reasonably conclude is that the intentionality we observe in mindless nature is the product of a mind that exists outside of nature.

    De Facto Intelligent Design in Biology 2010

  • I am concerned that instead we have found a surrogate for our children, in mindless commercial capitalism.

    2008 January 08 « Unambiguously Ambidextrous 2008

  • Would you rather be on the shop floor building Falcon boosters, or in mindless meetings or telecons at NASA discussing "requirements"?

    Launching the 21st Century American Aerospace Workforce - NASA Watch 2008

  • I am concerned that instead we have found a surrogate for our children, in mindless commercial capitalism.

    The Rise Of Feminism: The Fallout « Unambiguously Ambidextrous 2008

  • Spent the rest of the evening in mindless Net surfing, waiting to see how long it would take the house full of people that showed up to actually bother saying hello to me (an hour and a half, in case you are interested).

    Greetings And Salutations cutekelliekitte 2002

Comments

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  • You have to be in the proper frame of mindless.

    --Jeff Rosenbaum, April 1981

    December 1, 2007