subjectlessadj.

1803 J. Porter Thaddeus of Warsaw III. 91 Sick of their subjectless and dragging conversation.

1889 Universal Rev. 15 Feb. 249 The subjectless dulness of modern design.

1904 School World Mar. 121/2 The bombastic, subjectless twaddle which bulks so largely as literature at the present day.

1973 A. Powell Temporary Kings iii. 127 The only sanctuary from subjectless bric-à-brac here will be in the national pavilions of..the Iron Curtain countries.

1998 Daily Tel. 12 Nov. 29/1 Here was a documentary that broke most of the rules, being plotless, subjectless and seemingly formless.

1825 Times 19 July 2/3 Austria and Russia have formed a project for dividing Greece into principalities, and placing on the throne of each some subjectless Prince.

1841 T. Carlyle On Heroes vi. 370 The subjects without King can do nothing; the subjectless King can do something.

2002 V. Nikonov in D. E. Davis & E. P. Trani First Cold War Foreword, p. xiv The West began to consider Russia as a subjectless State with no government.

1827 tr. V. C. F. Rost Greek Gram. ii. iv. 496 If in an intermediate proposition one of the relations, which are otherwise designated by genitives absolute, is to be expressed by the participle of an impersonal verb, this subjectless participle then stands in its absolute form.

1852 To-day 11 Dec. 391/2 If disposed to be captious, I might call attention to the fifteenth line, where a verb stands subjectless.

1874 Supernat. Relig. II. ii. vi. 51 With nothing more definite than a subjectless ϕησί to indicate who is referred to.

1902 C. Hague tr. F. C. Brentano Origin Knowl. Right & Wrong App. 115 Miklosich expressed the view that the finite verb of subjectless propositions always stands in the third person of the singular.

1992 Independent (Nexis) 18 Nov. 14 It was..a clause hanging brittle and subjectless in the air, but you knew what he was getting at.

1860 J. D. Morell tr. I. H. Fichte Contrib. Mental Philos. ii. 36 That neither a pure and subjectless type floating in the air, nor a universal law can here suffice, is plain from the nature of the case.

1895 H. Dendy tr. C. Sigwart Logic II. iii. i.139 I doubt whether anyone could seriously think of..an inner perception of these events in which there is no perceiver, but only the object of the perception, the subjectless will or feeling itself.

1928 F. R. Tennant Philos. Theol. I. ii. 18 A subjectless experience is not merely an absurdity: a contradiction in meanings, it should be a contradiction in terms.

1979 J. Miller Hist. & Human Existence 250 Althusser in the same essay attributes the ‘discovery’ of history as a subjectless process to Marx.

2001 MLN 116 354 Kerr observes that Borges..fragments and dissolves individual identity, the idea of self and even the concept of subject, into a subjectless poetic voice.