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ABSTRACTED
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Lost in thought; showing preoccupation
Example:
the scatty glancing quality of a hyperactive but unfocused intelligence
Synonyms:
absent; absentminded; abstracted; scatty
Classified under:
Similar:
inattentive (showing a lack of attention or care)
Derivation:
abstractedness (preoccupation with something to the exclusion of all else)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Past simple / past participle of the verb abstract
Context examples:
In Bond Street especially, where much of their business lay, her eyes were in constant inquiry; and in whatever shop the party were engaged, her mind was equally abstracted from every thing actually before them, from all that interested and occupied the others.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
But besides his frequent absences, there was another barrier to friendship with him: he seemed of a reserved, an abstracted, and even of a brooding nature.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
He rummaged amid his newspapers, glancing over the dates, until at last he smoothed one out, doubled it over, and read the following paragraph: Hotel Cosmopolitan Jewel Robbery. John Horner, 26, plumber, was brought up upon the charge of having upon the 22nd inst., abstracted from the jewel-case of the Countess of Morcar the valuable gem known as the blue carbuncle.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He had that kind of shallow black eye—I want a better word to express an eye that has no depth in it to be looked into—which, when it is abstracted, seems from some peculiarity of light to be disfigured, for a moment at a time, by a cast.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Holmes had not said one word to me about the tragedy which we had witnessed, but I observed all the morning that he was in his most thoughtful mood, and he gave me the impression, from his vacant eyes and his abstracted manner, of a man who is striving to recall something to his memory.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
This done, he moved with slow step and abstracted air towards a door in the wall bordering the orchard.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable, and, having closed the door and bowed her into an armchair, he looked her over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which was peculiar to him.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
This was said with a careless, abstracted indifference, which showed that my solicitude was, at least in his opinion, wholly superfluous.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
As to Holmes, I observed that he sat frequently for half an hour on end, with knitted brows and an abstracted air, but he swept the matter away with a wave of his hand when I mentioned it.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Jumping over forms, and creeping under tables, I made my way to one of the fire-places; there, kneeling by the high wire fender, I found Burns, absorbed, silent, abstracted from all round her by the companionship of a book, which she read by the dim glare of the embers.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
