Definitions

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

  • noun Freedom from passion, bias, or emotion; objectivity.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Freedom from passion; an undisturbed state of the mind; apathy.

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

  • noun Freedom from passion; an undisturbed state; apathy.

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

  • noun Freedom from passion; an undisturbed state; apathy.

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

  • noun objectivity and detachment

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

dis- + passion

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Examples

  • At the end of nearly three hours of questions, Judge Lynch complimented all of us for discussing the law with "dispassion," which made me think we should have been more emotional about the impact this has had on our office.

    Shayana Kadidal: Our Day in Court against the NSA Program 2008

  • We did cite several things that happened, including particularly the contact with Joe Lockhart of the Kerry campaign that showed gross insensitivity to the kind of dispassion that you have to maintain, especially if you're going to do this kind of heavy investigative reporting.

    CNN Transcript Jan 10, 2005 2005

  • It is an instructive tour of how perversion and degeneracy is so often — and so successfully — promoted and propagated under the guise of supposed academic objectivity and professional dispassion:

    Science 2009

  • Catalan soprano Nuria Rial sings with breathtaking accuracy but glacial dispassion, while the Kammerorchester Basel, directed by its leader Julia Schröder, sounds scrupulous throughout, rather than committed.

    Telemann: Opera Arias – review 2012

  • Whatever policy differences people may have with him, we can all agree that he exemplifies reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity.

    The Dearth of Dignity 2009

  • Eggleston clearly inherits from pre- and postwar American Scene photographers, urban and rural alike, and is of a like mind with those of his contemporaries, practitioners of the "new topographics" who in the 1970s were measuring the social landscape with an intense dispassion.

    Peter Frank: Pioneering Art: Three Retrospectives At LACMA Peter Frank 2011

  • The general sits astride his favorite horse, Cincinnati; he is slouched, right arm akimbo, hat pulled low, gazing off in the distance with the cool dispassion for which he was famous.

    A Great Bronze Tarnished by Neglect Michael F. Bishop 2011

  • He yawned again, but beneath the veneer of dispassion, I sensed an earnest care.

    Exit the Actress Priya Parmar 2011

  • How could you even maintain any pretense of dispassion or cynicism when you know what it's like to look at a sleeping little girl's face?

    A Night Out With Anthony Bourdain 2011

  • Eggleston clearly inherits from pre- and postwar American Scene photographers, urban and rural alike, and is of a like mind with those of his contemporaries, practitioners of the "new topographics" who in the 1970s were measuring the social landscape with an intense dispassion.

    Peter Frank: Pioneering Art: Three Retrospectives At LACMA Peter Frank 2011

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