senseless
/ˈsɛnsləs
/adjective
1 [often as complement] (Of a person) unconscious: the attack left a policeman beaten senseless...
- Wilfred had screamed Cora's name, and she'd flown down the stairs to find Wilfred holding a senseless Jane in his arms.
- I tried to escape later by crawling away, and was kicked until I was senseless.
- In a little we had the senseless man stretched on a sofa in the library.
Synonyms
unconscious, out cold, out, cold, stunned, numb, numbed, insensible, insensate, comatose, knocked out, out for the count
informal KO'd, kayoed, laid out, dead to the world, out like a light
British informal spark out
rare soporose, soporous
1.1Incapable of sensation: she knocked the glass from the girl’s senseless fingers...
- Blake, his throat constricted too much to talk, nodded and took the paper with senseless fingers, feeling some sort of overwhelming depression begin to rise up from his stomach.
- My hands didn't want to work, my fingers utterly senseless, and when someone started to haul the line in the wet hemp simply started slipping through my fingers.
- With shaky hands she took the shampoo and soap, his fingers senseless.
2Lacking common sense; wildly foolish: it was as senseless as crossing Death Valley on foot...
- Happiness is not senseless, mindless, silly, stupid, corny, cheesy or unimportant.
- But I live in a country ridden with religious overtures in every facet of life, of silly, stupid superstitions, traditions and beliefs that are senseless and illogical.
- There was a time when the man could crack a joke, though there was never anything he found funnier than man's futile quest for meaning in a hopeless, senseless world.
Synonyms
pointless, futile, hopeless, fruitless, useless, needless, wasted, in vain, unavailing, aimless, idle, to no purpose, purposeless, worthless, meaningless, valueless, unproductive, unprofitable;
absurd, foolish, mad, insane, asinine, moronic, imbecilic, nonsensical, stupid, idiotic, silly, irrelevant, footling, fatuous, hollow, inane, ridiculous, ludicrous, mindless, unintelligent, unwise, irrational, illogical
informal daft
2.1(Especially of violent or wasteful action) without discernible meaning or purpose: in Vietnam I saw the senseless waste of human beings...
- To lose her in such violent, senseless circumstances thousands of miles from home can only heighten their anguish.
- After seeing someone close to him die as the victim of senseless, eminently preventable violent crime, he vows to protect the innocent, keeping the same fate from befalling others.
- Short said he and his family were struggling to come to terms with the violent, senseless nature of their son's death, coupled with signs of his swift descent into drug addiction.
Derivatives
senselessly
/ adverb ...- After rambling ineptly and senselessly for a while, he burbles ‘I just called to say I… like you.'
- Not only is it grossly stupid, it is senselessly violent.
- I guess he's now one of my oldest surviving mates, many others having disappeared without trace, turned into jerks, or senselessly died on the roads.
senselessness
- But when the global groundswell of goodwill leads not to a sensible expression of protest but to the senselessness of violence and vandalism, the message gets lost in the mayhem and the exploitation continues almost without comment.
- Now that they knew they were going to live, they were aware of the senselessness of their lives.
- I am a legacy of this process having been raised in a generation that learned about the holocaust at a very early age and saw its brutality and senselessness through black and white photographs.