1. Not connected or associated with something.
1736. Butler, Anal., I. i. 13. There would be no apprehension that any other power or event unconnected with this of death would destroy these faculties.
1796. Morse, Amer. Geog., I. 471. The colony of New Haven, though unconnected with the colony of Connecticut.
1842. Sedgwick, in Hudson’s Guide Lakes (1843), 191. We find … great masses of alluvial drift, entirely unconnected with any erosion of the existing rivers.
1885. Law Times, 10 Jan., 183/1. A surveyor … who is entirely unconnected with the neighbourhood.
ellipt. 1813. Shelley, Q. Mab, IV. 74. This is no unconnected misery, Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable.
b. Not physically joined with something.
1829. T. Castle, Introd. Bot., 150. The flowers have upwards of twenty-five stamens, all unconnected with the calyx.
2. Characterized by want of connection.
1762. Gibbon, Misc. Wks. (1814), V. 250. His epistles,… translated in a very bad style, and unconnected method.
1824. L. Murray, Eng. Gram. (ed. 5), I. 193. As the fashionable mode of unconnected composition is less improving to the mind of the reader.
1886. Willis & Clark, Cambridge, III. 249. His buildings are disposed in an unconnected manner about a quadrangular court.
3. Not joined together in order or sequence; disunited, isolated.
1777. Richardson, Pers. Dict., 1925. Incongruous, unconnected speech.
1791. Boswell, Johnson (1831), I. 180. Addison’s note was a fiction, in which unconnected fragments of his lucubrations were purposely jumbled together.
1809–10. Coleridge, Friend (1865), 9. These short and unconnected sentences are easily and instantly understood.
1889. Gretton, Memory’s Harkb., 55. I simply record unconnected anecdotes and disjointed facts.
4. Not having personal connections; not related by family ties, common aims, etc.
1802. Mar. Edgeworth, Moral T., A Summons. An individual in society who has friends … and a home, is in a more desirable situation than an unconnected being.
1812. Byron, Werner, IV. i. 516. I could only guess at one, And he to me a stranger, unconnected.
1846. Mrs. Gore, Eng. Char., I. 40. But without this … what would become of the vapid, unmeaning, unconnected Lady P——?
