Careless

How to spell careless

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce careless

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does careless mean?

1. adjectiveNot giving enough attention or thought to avoid mistakes or harm.

Careless in a sentence

• One careless error in the spreadsheet cost the team an entire afternoon.

• The report was full of careless mistakes that a quick review would have caught.

Where does careless come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word careless joins two pieces of native English. The first, care, comes from the Old English noun caru (also spelled cearu), which originally meant grief, sorrow, or burdensome anxiety rather than the modern sense of attentive concern; over the centuries the worried, heavy meaning softened into the idea of looking after something with attention. The second piece, the suffix -less, descends from the Old English leas, meaning free from or devoid of, the same element you see in fearless and hopeless. Put together, careless literally meant free from anxiety, and it long carried that calmer sense of being untroubled before it shifted toward today's dominant meaning of lacking proper attention or thought. The spelling trap is the single l: care simply takes -less, so there is only one l where writers sometimes expect a double, and the silent e of care is kept intact.

How the word is built

• care (Old English caru: anxiety, attention)
• -less (without)