notelessadj.

a1625 J. Fletcher Bonduca ii. i, in F. Beaumont & J. Fletcher Comedies & Trag. (1647) sig. Gggg2^v/1 Whose vertues..Must not be lost in mists and fogs of people, notelesse, and out of name.

1630 T. Dekker Second Pt. Honest Whore iv. i. 384 Let her walke Saint-like, notelesse, and vnknowne.

a1750 A. Hill Cleon to Lycidas in Wks. (1753) 291 A noteless, nameless, silent, friend To thought's obscure retreats, unnerv'd, like me, By dignity's bold brace, or fame's felt spring.

1786 R. Burns Poems 234 Is there a Bard of rustic song, Who, noteless, steals the crouds among.

1815 W. Scott Lord of Isles iii. iv. 86 In hurry of the night, 'Scaped noteless, and without remark, Two strangers.

1878 C. Stanford Symbols Christ (new ed.) ix. 250 Some noteless action may be the germ of a power that shall spread through all the earth.

a1912 A. Lang Scot to Jeanne d'Arc in Poet. Wks. (1923) I. 69 Born of a lowly line, Noteless as once was thine, One of that name I would were kin to me.

1936 A. E. Housman More Poems 37 The veins of these that slumber Leapt once with dancing fires divine; The blood of all this noteless number Ran red like mine.

1721 T. D'Urfey Two Queens Brentford i. ii, in New Opera's 22 The Bagpipe with its Squeak and Drone, Or Parish-Clerk, with noteless Tone, Are Owls to us Sweet Singers.

1821 Ld. Byron Don Juan: Canto IV lxxxvii. 114 An ignorant, noteless, timeless, tuneless fellow.

1826 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. 20 405 A little brown noteless bird starts from among our feet.

1852 G. M. Murphy Anti-alcohol 38 Here noteless music, and adult'rate wine, Aid pleasures, indiscreet, to steal the time.

1988 B. Day N. Coward: Compl. Lyrics 213/1 It was he..who coped valiantly with the noteless, tuneless horrors we were faced with in camps and messes when we were not able to travel a piano.

2000 Instructor (Nexis) 1 Apr. 40 Rocking rhythms will take us along to the rising crest of a noteless song.

1950 Hispanic Amer. Hist. Rev. 30 441 Religious toleration was thus assailed in..the noteless Spanish Bible in La Ballena.

1984 William & Mary Q. 41 412 Even if no one had attended, he would still have given his well-organized, noteless lectures as required by decree of the Emperor Bonaparte.

1996 San Francisco Chron. (Nexis) 10 Sept. a2 The results are somewhat surprising, given the rave reviews that Dole received for her noteless, talk show-style speech about her husband at the Republican convention last month.

1830 R. Chambers Life James I II. iii. 209 Clouds..decline notelessly..beneath the horizon.

a1886 E. Dickinson Shady Friend in Poems (1892) i. xxxiv. 57 Ah! the bewildering thread! The tapestries of paradise So notelessly are made!

1992 Evening Standard (Nexis) 2 June 44 In the Japanese piece, he and his brass colleagues ended up puffing notelessly into their instruments as the lights dimmed.

1830 R. Chambers Life James I II. x. 258 His life was spent in its usual tranquillity and notelessness.

1932 Mod. Lang. Notes 47 540 A kind of middle course between the notelessness of Mr. Josephson's recent Rousseau and the abundant specification that Professor Havens craved in that book.