self-forgetting

[self-fer-get-ing, self-]

adjective

1. self-forgetful.

Other Word Forms

• self-forgettingly adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of self-forgetting¹

First recorded in 1840–50

Example Sentences

And the length of the books — their uncompressed, occasionally boring plots — created a profound new version of the self-forgetting that the best stories give us.

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As Prose, who is also a novelist, writes: "Who, exactly will suffer if, in that one tiny moment of self-forgetting, we help ourselves to the second or even third helping of pecan pie?"

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Wiseman’s studies of people entranced, or stupefied, by Leonardos and Vermeers amount to a pictorial essay on self-forgetting: faces young and old, plain and fancy, each as vulnerable as that of a sleepwalker.

Read more on The New Yorker

For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.

Read more on MSNBC

Our fellow-prisoners are often seen to be so absorbed in their own affairs that it is vain to seek light from them; but He, with patient, self-forgetting friendliness, is ever disengaged, and even elicits, by the kindly and interrogating attitude He takes towards us, the utterance of all our woes and perplexities.

Read more on Project Gutenberg