a. [f. WEIGHT sb.1 + -LESS.] Without weight, having comparatively little weight.
a. 1547. Surrey, Æneid, II. 1054. But she was gone, And suttly fled into the weightlesse aire.
1597. Shaks., 2 Hen. IV., IV. v. 33. Did hee suspire, that light and weightlesse dowlne Perforce must moue.
1621. G. Sandys, Ovid’s Met., X. (1626), 214. The Swans that drew Idalia’s waightlesse charriot through the aire.
1652. Benlowes, Theophila, III. xxx. Those lights … Who would portray, as soon may find A way to paint the viewless, poise the weightless wind.
1860. W. W. Reade, Liberty Hall, I. v. 77. The captain of the Liberty Hall boat … had long since observed young Saxon, his form slim therefore weightless.
1890. K. Pearson, in Messenger Math., XX. 28. Suppose the load at the free terminal not to be produced by a suspended load but by a weightless spring.
b. of immaterial things.
1608. J. Robinson, in Bp. Hall, Apol. Brownists (1610), 3, margin. [They] are oft times emboldened to roule vpon them as from aloft very weake and weightlesse discourses.
1662. Dryden, To Ld. Chancellor, 155. The glorious course you have begun … must both weightless and immortal prove.
1855. Singleton, Virgil, VII. 814. For neither weightless was Amata’s name.
1858. W. Arnot, Laws fr. Heaven for Life on Earth, 2nd Ser. ii. 22. A voluble tongue … may … not add one grain to the stock of human wisdom by the imposing bulk of its weightless product.
Hence Weightlessness.
1884. E. Fawcett, Rutherford, xvii. 195. The hand which she gave him had wasted into almost utter weightlessness.
