unconscious

adjective

1. 1

   Not awake; having no awareness (usually as the result of a head injury).

   After the anesthetist administered the general anesthetic the patient was unconscious.

   The firefighters put on breathing apparatus and managed to find the injured. In one case, they were almost too late - one of the bystanders who had helped with the initial rescue attempts had been reported missing. They were later found unconscious, having been overcome by the fumes.

2. 2

   Without directed thought or awareness.

   My sudden fright was an unconscious response.

   It was intolerable, he felt, to sit and eat in presence of that silent figure partly turned away from him, jotting down the different amounts on a bit of paper, and absorbed in that occupation as if unconscious of his presence.

   Reshaping [of British Railways] was far from perfect. It was tainted by statistical overreach, the unconscious biases of its author, and by the political demands being placed upon the BRB by government.

3. 3

   engaged in skilled performance without conscious control.

   Sam is unconscious, filling it, drilling it from every conceivable angle. Lem is awful and Cooper seems confused. Josh shoots too often.

   "I was unconscious," the basketball player gushes. "It seemed like everything I threw up toward the basket went straight in."

   Someone who has reeled off a string of baskets will say, "I was unconscious," as if he were following the Zen injunction to be mindful while suspending thought.

noun

1. 1

   That part of mind that is not consciously perceived.

   Because the unconscious is outside time, it can perceive transformations beyond the limits of the ego.

Forms

plural

unconsciouses

comparative

more unconscious

superlative

most unconscious