Word.ws English Dictionary

absentmindedly

absentmindedly is the alternative form of absent-mindedly.

Meaning of absent-mindedly

Adverb

absent-mindedly (comparative more absent-mindedly, superlative most absent-mindedly)

  1. Preoccupiedly; in an absent-minded manner.
    • Professor Archimedes Q. Porter, his hands clasped beneath the tails of his long coat, paces back and forth under the ever-watchful eye of his faithful secretary, Mr. Samuel T. Philander. Twice within the past few minutes he has started absent-mindedly across the tracks in the direction of a near-by...1913 June–December, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Ships That Pass”, in The Return of Tarzan, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, […], published March 1915, →OCLC, page 154

Forms of absentmindedly

comparativemore absentmindedly
superlativemost absentmindedly

Origin of absentmindedly

From absentminded + -ly.

Questions about absentmindedly

What is absentmindedly the alternative form of?
Absentmindedly is the alternative form of absent-mindedly.

Words near absentmindedly in the dictionary

  1. absently
  2. absentment
  3. absentminded
  4. absentminded professor
  5. absentminded professors
  6. absentmindedly
  7. absentmindedness
  8. absentness
  9. absents
  10. absenty
  11. Abseron

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: absentmindedly (page history and authors); absent-mindedly (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “absentmindedly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/absentmindedly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.