- forgetful
- forgetful, oblivious, unmindful are comparable when they mean losing or letting go from one's mind something once known or learned.Forgetful usually implies a propensity not to remember or a defective memory{
bear with me, good boy, I am much forgetful— Shak.
}{she is growing forgetful
}Sometimes it implies a not keeping in mind something which should be remembered; it then connotes negligence or heedlessness rather than a poor memory{he should not be forgetful of his social obligations
}{be not forgetful to entertain strangers— Heb 13:2
}Oblivious stresses forgetfulness, but it rarely suggests a poor memory. Rather, it suggests a failure to remember, either because one has been robbed of remembrance by conditions beyond one's control{the accident made him for a few hours oblivious of all that weighed upon his mind
}or because one has deliberately put something out of one's mind{a government oblivious of the rights of the governed
}or because one has considered something too slight or trivial to note and remember it{a people so long unused to aggression as to be oblivious of its dangers
}In some instances oblivious is employed without a clear connotation of forgetfulness, and in a sense close to unconscious, unaware, and insensible{walking along whistling, oblivious of the passing crowds
}{those who hope to render themselves, through absorption in the mere habit and technique of writing poetry, oblivious to the harsh interruptions of reality—Day Lewis
}{oblivious of the laws and conditions of trespass— Meredith
}Oblivious also is sometimes used attributively and without a succeeding of or to in the sense of causing oblivion{she lay in deep, oblivious slumber— Longfellow
}Unmindful is a close synonym of forgetful in the sense of not keeping in mind, but it may imply a deliberate consignment to oblivion as well as inattention, heedlessness, or negligence{a mother, solicitous of the health of every member of her family but unmindful of her own
}{every person was willing to save himself, unmindful of others— Goldsmith
}{for at her silver voice came death and life, unmindful each of their accustomed strife— Shelley
}{totally unmindful of their mutual dependence— Amer. Guide Series: Minn.
}Contrasted words: conscious, *aware, cognizant, sensible, alive, awake: *thoughtful, considerate, attentive
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
