affectless

American  

[af-ekt-lis] / ˈæf ɛkt lɪs /

adjective

1. lacking feeling or emotion; indifferent to the suffering of others.

   an affectless, futuristic drama in which the human characters are virtually robots.

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affectless British  

/ əˈfɛktlɪs /

adjective

1. 1. showing no emotion or concern for others

   2. not giving rise to any emotion or feeling

      an affectless novel

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Other Word Forms

• affectlessly adverb
• affectlessness noun

Etymology

Origin of affectless

First recorded in 1965–70; affect ¹ + -less

Example Sentences

Astrud Gilberto sings “The Girl from Ipanema” in a light, affectless style that influenced Sade and Suzanne Vega among others, as if she had already moved on to other matters.

From Seattle Times • Jun. 6, 2023

They deliver their lines in an emotionless, crystal-clear manner that verges on the unrehearsed; not entirely affectless, but rather with the slightly enunciated flatness of an audio tutorial.

From New York Times • Jan. 22, 2023

The use of an A.I. program to replicate Warhol’s flat, affectless speech to read the diary entries had a strangely fitting logic.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 16, 2022

But Kogonada’s self-conscious style begins to work against the material, with his precisionist aesthetic looking increasingly mannered, the actors’ affectless characterizations lending the proceedings a numb, distanced quality.

From Washington Post • Mar. 2, 2022

We have seen that these stupors were essentially affectless reactions and we can therefore say that, so far as these two cases are concerned, the ideas thus formulated were not associated with any affect.

From Benign Stupors A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type by MacCurdy, John T. (John Thompson)