absentminded

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   so preoccupied with one's thoughts that one fails to notice the surroundings or remember ordinary things

   The absentminded professor searched for the glasses resting on his head.

Also written absent-minded; formed from absent + minded and recorded from 1810 in the sense "forgetful because one's attention is elsewhere." The older phrase absence of mind expressed the same condition by the late eighteenth century.

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