dispassionate
/dɪsˈpæʃənət/
dispassionate means not showing, and not affected by, emotion, bias, or prejudice. It carries an Arena rating of 1654, earned across 6 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, dispassionate ranks #1,790 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #3,345 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #3,791 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #3,804 of 17,126 for Most Satisfying to Say.
dispassionate is pronounced /dɪsˈpæʃənət/.
Why “dispassionate” is a great word
Not influenced by strong emotion, and therefore able to be impartial and objective. From the prefix dis- (expressing negation or reversal) + passionate (from the Latin root *passion-*, meaning 'suffering' or 'strong feeling'), first recorded in English 1585–95. Unlike "apathetic" (which implies a hollow lack of feeling) or "unbiased" (which states the condition of fairness), "dispassionate" denotes the hard-won process of setting feeling aside. It is the steady hand of the surgeon at the incision, the cool appraisal of the judge weighing evidence, or the scientist’s careful notation of data that contradicts a beloved hypothesis—a conscious, almost austere, renunciation of the self’s clamor in service to a clearer truth.
Etymology
From dis- + passionate.
adj
- Not showing, and not affected by, emotion, bias, or prejudice.e.g.“I am an indifferent player. If the tactics of the game have been reduced to machinery and the combinations are controlled by a dispassionate automaton, the one-tenth would constitute a winning factor.” — 1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC:
verb
- To free from passion.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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