Oblivious

//əˈblɪviːəs// adj

adj ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Lacking awareness; unmindful; unaware, unconscious of. usually

    "Your grandmother is completely oblivious to her surroundings."

  2. 2
    Forgetful. dated, usually, with-of

    "He's hopelessly oblivious, always forgetting his appointments."

Adjective
  1. 1
    failing to keep in mind wordnet
  2. 2
    (followed by ‘to’ or ‘of’) lacking conscious awareness of wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
forgetfulunawareabsentabsent-mindedabsentmindedabsorbed

Example

More examples

"She was so preoccupied that she was oblivious of her surroundings."

Etymology

From Middle English oblivious, from Latin oblīviōsus (“forgetful, oblivious”), formed from oblīvium (“forgetfulness, oblivion”) + -ōsus (“full of, overly, prone to”), from oblīvīscor (“to forget”).

Related phrases

cache-obliviousoblivious transfer

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.