CAUSELESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does causeless mean? 

• CAUSELESS (adjective)
  The adjective CAUSELESS has 2 senses:

1. having no justifying cause or reason

2. having no cause or apparent cause

  Familiarity information: CAUSELESS used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CAUSELESS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Having no justifying cause or reason

Synonyms:

causeless; reasonless

Context example:

an apparently arbitrary and reasonless change

Similar:

unmotivated (without motivation)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Having no cause or apparent cause

Synonyms:

causeless; fortuitous; uncaused

Context example:

we cannot regard artistic invention as...uncaused and unrelated to the times

Similar:

unintended (not deliberate)

 Context examples 

The violent and causeless excitement, followed by this brutality of speech, so far removed from his usual suavity, showed me how deep was the disorganisation of his mind.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

So horrid was the causeless rage of the crooked creature, that the clerk came over a cold thrill, and took to his heels until he was out of shot from stone or word.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A glance at the old chest, as she turned away from this examination, was not without its use; she scorned the causeless fears of an idle fancy, and began with a most happy indifference to prepare herself for bed.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

But when I slept, or when the virtue of the medicine wore off, I would leap almost without transition (for the pangs of transformation grew daily less marked) into the possession of a fancy brimming with images of terror, a soul boiling with causeless hatreds, and a body that seemed not strong enough to contain the raging energies of life.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

If, indeed, by any strange mischance his father should have gained intelligence of what she had dared to think and look for, of her causeless fancies and injurious examinations, she could not wonder at any degree of his indignation.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

A buzz of excitement went up from the knot of squires as Alleyne, his gentle nature turned by this causeless attack into fiery resolution, dashed his glove with all his strength into the sneering face of his antagonist.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Her thoughts being still chiefly fixed on what she had with such causeless terror felt and done, nothing could shortly be clearer than that it had been all a voluntary, self-created delusion, each trifling circumstance receiving importance from an imagination resolved on alarm, and everything forced to bend to one purpose by a mind which, before she entered the abbey, had been craving to be frightened.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)