ppl. a. [UN-1 10.]

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  1.  Not exercising the faculty of thought; thoughtless; unreflecting, undiscriminating.

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1676.  Glanvill, Ess. Philos. & Relig., i. 29. The shallow, unthinking Vulgar, are sure of all things.

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1683.  D. A., Art Converse, 14. Women are generally an unthinking sort of Creatures.

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1748.  Smollett, R. Random, vii. I was no longer a pert unthinking coxcomb.

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1780.  Mirror, No. 72. The effect of scenes like that I have described, on minds neither frigid nor unthinking.

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1849.  Macaulay, Hist. Eng., iii. I. 393. Even the unthinking King showed some signs of concern.

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1868.  Morris, Earthly Par., I. I. 311. Then swelled his vain unthinking heart with pride.

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  absol.  1697.  C. Leslie, Snake in Grass (ed. 2), p. ii. Atheism takes none But the Un-thinking and Debauch’d.

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1769.  Robertson, Chas. V., II. Wks. 1813, V. 238. Even the most unthinking were shocked.

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1873.  Proctor, Expanse Heav., 298. That steadfastness which, to the unthinking, would have had no significance.

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  2.  Characterized by absence of thought.

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1688.  R. Pepys, Lett., in S. Pepys’ Life (1841), II. 127. The unthinking conduct of a violent passion.

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1693.  T. Creech, in Dryden’s Juvenal, XIII. (1697), 324. All laugh to find Unthinking Plainness so o’er-spread thy Mind.

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1709.  Addison, Tatler, No. 75, ¶ 8. You see a deep Attention and a certain unthinking Sharpness in every Countenance.

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1796.  Mme. D’Arblay, Camilla, I. 25. Even in the unthinking period of earliest youth.

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1832.  Lytton, Eugene A., I. xi. When I see the unthinking and lavish idolatry you manifest.

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1873.  Black, Pr. Thule, xiv. She walked on, in a blind and unthinking fashion.

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  3.  Not possessing the faculty of thought.

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a. 1688.  Cudworth, Immut. Mor. (1731), 299. If all Being … may … arise out of the dark Womb of unthinking Matter.

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1710.  Berkeley, Princ. Hum. Knowl., § 10. They who assert that figure, motion,… do exist without the mind in unthinking substances.

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1794.  R. J. Sulivan, View Nat., IV. 8. I can never conceive, that a capacity of thinking can be the effect of the combination and motion of unthinking elements.

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