Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Having no subject or subjects.

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

  • adjective Having no subject.

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

  • adjective Lacking a subject

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

subject +‎ -less

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Examples

  • In such a case, the absence of intentionality -- and its eventual reconstruction (as the agency of the unconscious) through the work of analysis -- renders a conspiracy "subjectless" or transindividual.

    Bringing About the Past 1997

  • Since children learning Spanish frequently hear subjectless sentences, whereas those learning English do not, the parameter setting is switched in the Spanish learner, but remains set at the default for the English learner.

    Innateness and Language Cowie, Fiona 2008

  • The presumption of reasonable outcomes thus rests not so much on the individual capacities of citizens to act like the participants of ideal discourse, but rather on the aggregate reasonableness of a “subjectless communication” that emerges as the collective result of discursive structures ” the formal and informal modes of organizing discussion (1996b, 184 “ 86, 301, 341).

    Jürgen Habermas Bohman, James 2007

  • Whether it comes in the form of another self-congratulatory bicycling post, or a frenzy of uninspired, subjectless blue-and-tan “scenic” photos — you have brought his unspeakable wrath upon yourselves.

    Firedoglake » Memorial Day Truth: There Is No “War on Terror” 2006

  • At that time, California, like most states, had a rather insubstantial, subjectless curriculum of social studies, and I was one of those who helped make it a very substantive, knowledge-rich history curriculum, beginning in the early grades.

    Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms 2000

  • At first inarticulate, confused, they dripped strings of mere words; expletives, exclamations, detached phrases, broken clauses, sentences that started with subjects and trailed, unpredicated, to stupid silence; sentences beginning subjectless and hobbling to futile conclusion.

    Angel Island Inez Haynes Gillmore 1921

  • As if to mark beyond a doubt the insignificance of the part man plays in their thought, sentences are usually subjectless.

    The Soul of the Far East Percival Lowell 1885

  • To us there would seem nothing at all in that conversation, vapid and subjectless; to them it means much.

    The Open Air Richard Jefferies 1867

  • The subjects without King can do nothing; the subjectless King can do something.

    Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History Thomas Carlyle 1838

  • Sick of his subjectless and dragging conversation, she gladly followed Lady Dundas to the drawing-room, where, opening her knitting case, she took her station in a remote corner.

    Thaddeus of Warsaw Jane Porter 1813

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