disembodied
Britishadjective
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lacking a body or freed from the body; incorporeal
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lacking in substance, solidity, or any firm relation to reality
Explanation
Something that's disembodied is disconnected from a solid form or body. If you hear a disembodied voice coming from your basement, it's spooky and ghostly, with no visible shape or form. Use the adjective disembodied to describe something that's separate from any substantial structure. A magic trick might make it appear that a disembodied head is floating in the air, and a mysterious voice or cry ringing out in the night would also seem to be disembodied. The root of disembodied is the verb embody, which had the earliest meaning of "invest a soul or spirit with a physical form."
Vocabulary lists containing disembodied
And Then There Were None
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The Chocolate War
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The Haunting of Hill House
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Disembodied experience is now commonplace in contemporary life — a truth — as anyone looking into the flickering light of a cellphone screen can attest.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 21, 2022
On her own, she founded the Poets Press and for years taught at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, in Boulder, Colorado.
From Seattle Times • Oct. 28, 2020
Disembodied human forms took shape, often just heads and hands — the parts of the body needed to produce art, Ms. Rothenberg said.
From Washington Post • May 23, 2020
I was in the Jack Keroac Institute School of Disembodied Poetics, and that was really a big part of my life when I originally went, got dropped off in the woods.
From Salon • Mar. 9, 2019
The title was “On the Powers and Qualities of Disembodied Spirits.”
From The Lady of the Shroud by Stoker, Bram
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
