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DISINTERESTED
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Unaffected by self-interest
Classified under:
Similar:
impartial (showing lack of favoritism)
Derivation:
disinterestedness (freedom from bias or from selfish motives)
Context examples:
He forgets nothing that is disinterested and good.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
This was his plan of amends—of atonement—for inheriting their father's estate; and he thought it an excellent one, full of eligibility and suitableness, and excessively generous and disinterested on his own part.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
She had seen too much of the world, to expect sudden or disinterested attachment anywhere, but her illness had proved to her that her landlady had a character to preserve, and would not use her ill; and she had been particularly fortunate in her nurse, as a sister of her landlady, a nurse by profession, and who had always a home in that house when unemployed, chanced to be at liberty just in time to attend her.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
If you think so, you must have a strange opinion of me; you must regard me as a plotting profligate—a base and low rake who has been simulating disinterested love in order to draw you into a snare deliberately laid, and strip you of honour and rob you of self-respect.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
But stranger things have happened; and when we cease to care for each other as we do now, it will be the means of confirming us in that sort of true disinterested friendship which I can already look forward to with pleasure.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
The needful was comprised in Mr. Morland's promise; his honour was pledged to make everything easy; and by what means their income was to be formed, whether landed property were to be resigned, or funded money made over, was a matter in which her disinterested spirit took no concern.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
In such a situation as that, where there seemed nothing to tempt the avarice or the vanity of any living creature, how could I suppose, when she so earnestly, so warmly insisted on sharing my fate, whatever it might be, that any thing but the most disinterested affection was her inducement?
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
Miss Crawford's countenance, as Julia spoke, might have amused a disinterested observer.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
“You will find her,” pursued my aunt, “as good, as beautiful, as earnest, as disinterested, as she has always been. If I knew higher praise, Trot, I would bestow it on her.”
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
The stupidity with which he was favoured by nature must guard his courtship from any charm that could make a woman wish for its continuance; and Miss Lucas, who accepted him solely from the pure and disinterested desire of an establishment, cared not how soon that establishment were gained.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
