Oblivious

How to spell oblivious

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce oblivious

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does oblivious mean?

1. adjectiveNot aware of or not noticing what is happening around you.

Oblivious in a sentence

• He stayed oblivious to the chaos in the next office, headphones firmly on.

• She was completely oblivious of the time and missed her train.

Where does oblivious come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin obliviosus, meaning 'forgetful', which was built on the noun oblivio, 'forgetfulness', and ultimately on the verb oblivisci, 'to forget'. Scholars connect oblivisci to the idea of something being smoothed over or wiped away, perhaps from ob- 'over' combined with a root related to levis 'smooth', as if a memory had been rubbed flat. English borrowed it in the fifteenth century with the older sense of 'forgetful', and only later did the dominant modern meaning, 'unaware of what is happening around you', take hold. The same Latin oblivio sits behind the English word 'oblivion', the state of being utterly forgotten, which is a useful spelling cue: oblivious keeps that whole 'oblivi-' chunk intact. The chief spelling trap is the unstressed vowels, since the middle 'i' and the ending '-ious' both reduce to a faint schwa in speech.

How the word is built

• ob- (over, against)
• livi- (from Latin oblivisci, to forget)
• -ous (adjective suffix: full of)