will-less

American  

[wil-lis] / ˈwɪl lɪs /

adjective

1. having or exerting no will.

   a timid, will-less little man.

2. done or occurring without the will; involuntary.

   a will-less compliance.

3. leaving no will; intestate.

   to die will-less.

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Other Word Forms

• will-lessly adverb
• will-lessness noun

Etymology

Origin of will-less

First recorded in 1740–50

Example Sentences

Right now the future just looks like a big Will-less blank because it’s still in the future.

From Slate

“They deal entirely with the physical world; they throw stones, they move objects, they smash dishes; Mrs. Foyster at Borley Rectory was a long-suffering woman, but she finally lost her temper entirely when her best teapot was hurled through the window. Poltergeists, however, are rock-bottom on the supernatural social scale; they are destructive, but mindless and will-less; they are merely undirected force. Do you recall,” he asked with a little smile, “Oscar Wilde’s lovely story, ‘The Canterville Ghost’?”

From Literature

These boys and girls were will-less, their speech flat, their gestures vague, their personalities devoid of anger, hope, laughter, enthusiasm, passion, or despair.

From Literature

In the æsthetical mode of contemplation we have found two inseparable constituent parts—the knowledge of the object, not as individual thing but as Platonic Idea, that is, as the enduring form of this whole species of things; and the self-consciousness of the knowing person, not as individual, but as pure will-less subject of knowledge.

From Project Gutenberg

For at the moment at which, freed from the will, we give ourselves up to pure will-less knowing, we pass into a world from which everything is absent that influenced our will and moved us so violently through it.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• compulsory
• forced
• spontaneous
• uncontrolled
• unintentional