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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

lidless en · ADJ

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- Proto-Indo-European *-éyti Proto-Indo-European *ḱléyti Proto-Indo-European *ḱley- Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Indo-European *ḱlitós Proto-Indo-European *-om Proto-Indo-European *ḱlitóm Proto-Germanic *hlidą Proto-West Germanic *hlid Old English hlid Middle English lid English lid Proto-Indo-European *lewh₁- Proto-Indo-European *lewHs-der. Proto-Germanic *leusaną Proto-Germanic *lausaz Proto-Germanic *-lausaz Proto-West Germanic *-laus Old English -lēas Middle English -les English -less English lidless From lid + -less.

Meanings

  1. (not-comparable) Without a lid.
    • Two or three minutes later the murdered man, the blanketed corpse, the lidless coffin, and the open grave were under no inspection but the moon’s. 1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “Chapter 9”, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC:
    • One foot caught on a ridge in the blacktop driveway and I stumbled. The cup of café mocha flew out of my grasp and settled lidless on the pavement. 2007, Nicole Young, chapter 11, in Love Me If You Must (A Patricia Amble Mystery), Grand Rapids, Mich.: Fleming H. Revell, →ISBN, page 93:
    • When I exercised the pony, old Johnny, after school hours I loved to ride through the Cook Street chaos of garbage. High and safe on the horse’s back I could look down into it and see wild rose bushes forcing their blooms up through lidless cook stoves and skunk cabbage peeping out of bottomless perambulators, beds tipped at any angle, their years of restfulness all finished and done with. 1942, Emily Carr, “Cook Street”, in The Book of Small, Toronto, Ont.: Oxford University Press, →OCLC:
    • 1797, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Ode on the Departing Year,” Epode II, in Poems, Bristol: J. Cottle & Messrs. Robinsons, 2nd edition, p. 15, […] yet, as she lies By livid fount, or roar of blazing stream, If ever to her lidless dragon eyes, O Albion! thy predestin’d ruins rise, The Fiend-hag on her perilous couch doth leap, Mutt’ring distemper’d triumph in her charmed sleep.
    • You can scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked—those pale, chinless faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey eyes!—as they stared in their blindness and bewilderment. 1895 May 29, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “Chapter 6”, in The Time Machine: An Invention, London: William Heinemann, →OCLC:

Deriveds

lidlessness