NEGLIGENT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does negligent mean? 

• NEGLIGENT (adjective)
  The adjective NEGLIGENT has 1 sense:

1. characterized by neglect and undue lack of concern

  Familiarity information: NEGLIGENT used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• NEGLIGENT (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Characterized by neglect and undue lack of concern

Context example:

negligent in his correspondence

Similar:

delinquent; derelict; neglectful; remiss (failing in what duty requires)

lax; slack (lacking in rigor or strictness)

hit-and-run (involving a driver of a motor vehicle who leaves the scene of an accident)

inattentive; neglectful (not showing due care or attention)

Also:

inattentive (showing a lack of attention or care)

careless (marked by lack of attention or consideration or forethought or thoroughness; not careful)

Antonym:

diligent (characterized by care and perseverance in carrying out tasks)

Derivation:

neglect (fail to attend to)

neglect (give little or no attention to)

negligence (the trait of neglecting responsibilities and lacking concern)

 Context examples 

On her father, her confidence had not been sanguine, but he was more negligent of his family, his habits were worse, and his manners coarser, than she had been prepared for.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Where a man does his best with only moderate powers, he will have the advantage over negligent superiority.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Holmes strolled round the house with his hands in his pockets and a negligent air which was unusual with him.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

His family knew him to be, on all common occasions, a most negligent and dilatory correspondent; but at such a time they had hoped for exertion.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

I have been very negligent—but are you now at leisure to satisfy me in these particulars?

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

And you can hardly think, said Mr. Spenlow, having experience of what we see, in the Commons here, every day, of the various unaccountable and negligent proceedings of men, in respect of their testamentary arrangements—of all subjects, the one on which perhaps the strangest revelations of human inconsistency are to be met with—but that mine are made?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Certainly; and if he is lazy or negligent, I will write his excuses myself.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Concerning the one in question, therefore, I have only to add—aware that the rules of composition forbid the introduction of a character not connected with my fable—that this was the very gentleman whose negligent servant left behind him that collection of washing-bills, resulting from a long visit at Northanger, by which my heroine was involved in one of her most alarming adventures.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

He meets with a young woman at a watering-place, gains her affection, cannot even weary her by negligent treatment—and had he and all his family sought round the world for a perfect wife for him, they could not have found her superior.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)