Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Freedom from selfish bias or self-interest; impartiality.
- noun Lack of interest; indifference.
- transitive verb To divest of interest.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To rid of interest; disengage from private interest or advantage; destroy the interest of.
- noun What is contrary to interest or advantage; disadvantage; injury.
- noun Indifference to profit; want of regard to private advantage.
- See
disinteressed .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun obsolete What is contrary to interest or advantage; disadvantage.
- noun obsolete Indifference to profit; want of regard to private advantage; disinterestedness.
- adjective obsolete Disinterested.
- transitive verb obsolete To divest of interest or interested motives.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun uncountable A lack of interest;
indifference ;apathy . - noun uncountable The
absence of selfishbias orself-interest ;impartiality ordetachment . - verb transitive To render
disinterested .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun tolerance attributable to a lack of involvement
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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This calm disinterest is often why many organizations hire arbitrators to help negotiate contracts between say, a union and a company.
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Downing Street have released the initial details of Prime Minister Gollum Brown's Cabinet reshuffle to awed disinterest from the world.
Archive 2009-06-01 Dungeekin 2009
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Author James Bradley has a wonderfully in-depth review of The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham: Yet this disinterest is of a piece with the novel's desire to unsettle not by transporting the reader to a world unknown to them, but by taking the world they know and exposing the assumptions at its core.
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Downing Street have released the initial details of Prime Minister Gollum Brown's Cabinet reshuffle to awed disinterest from the world.
Reshuffle "More of a Slight Jiggle" Dungeekin 2009
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Everybody wants approval, and disinterest is almost as bad as disapproval.
No Guts, No Glory Candid Engineer 2008
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As childish as it sounds, I think my disinterest comes from the lack of physical action in the book.
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However, touch-screen voters were EIGHT times more likely not to register any vote at all -- obviously a sign of error on the machine's part rather than disinterest from the voter in the booth.
07/28/2004 2004
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Against the explicitly but restrictively political mandates of critical and monumental histories, antiquarian history holds out the ideal of disinterest, even as disinterest is deemed no longer possible.
Is Literary History the History of Everything? The Case for 'Antiquarian' History 2002
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The Labour Party, if their past performance, and their present disinterest, is any indication, are even more opposed.
Scottish Home Rule 1955
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In fact, a few songs here are leftovers from earlier unreleased sessions and singles sides to pad the album to 11 tracks, a clear sign of growing label disinterest after his relatively conceptually unified
unknown title 2009
bilby commented on the word disinterest
I happen to think the distinction between uninterested and disinterested is worthwhile, hence constructions of the following type are not pleasing:
"But it's there for all to see - his sloth-like administration, his flip-flopping in decision-making and his seeming disinterest in state affairs." - Steven Gan, unreferenced article on the subject of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
Coupled with seeming, we have a really rubbery construction. So what's he implying?
- That Badawi seems unbiased (but isn't, only seems so); or
- That Badawi seems unbiased (and is, seeming is believing);
- That Badawi seems apathetic (and is, that's the way it seems); or
- That Badawi seems apathetic (but isn't, only seems so).
Would that I ever find a ruler with a genuine disinterest in state affairs!
December 4, 2007