neglect
/nɪˈɡlɛkt/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.79 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To ignore for the sake of simplifying calculations without significantly affecting accuracy.
Transitive verb
Example Sentences
- "to neglect duty or business; to neglect to pay debts"
- "I hope My absence doth neglect no great designs."
- "This, my long sufferance and my day of grace, Those who neglect and scorn, shall never taste."
- "One of the hidden glories of Victorian engineering is proper drains.[…]But out of sight is out of mind. And that, together with the inherent yuckiness of the subject, means that many old sewers have been neglected and are in dire need of repair."
- "to neglect strangers"
- "A friend of mine who runs an intellectual magazine was grousing about his movie critic, complaining that though the fellow had liked The Godfather (page 58), he had neglected to label it clearly as a masterpiece."
Etymology
The verb is inherited from Middle English neglect, neclect, derived from Latin neglēctus, perfect passive participle of neglegō (“to make light of, disregard, not to pick up”), itself from nec (“not”) + legō (“to pick up, select”). The noun is from neglēctus (“neglect”). First attested in 1460, the noun in 1588.
Origin
- Source language: Middle English
- First known use: First attested in 1460
Word Breakdown
- Root: *leǵ-, neglecten, neglēctus