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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

neglect.

To fail to care for or attend to something.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/nɪˈɡlɛkt/

  1. To fail to care for or attend to something.

    transitive
    to neglect duty or business;  to neglect to pay debts

  2. To omit to notice; to forbear to treat with attention or respect; to slight.

    transitive
    to neglect strangers

  3. To fail to do or carry out something due to oversight or carelessness.

    transitive

  4. To ignore for the sake of simplifying calculations without significantly affecting accuracy.

    transitive
    We can neglect this term, as it approaches zero in the limit anyway.
    This problem says to neglect air resistance.
Where this word comes from

The verb is inherited from Middle English neglect, neclect, derived from Latin neglēctus, perfect passive participle of neglegō (“to make light of, disregard, not to pick up”), itself from nec (“not”) + legō (“to pick up, select”). The noun is from neglēctus (“neglect”). First attested in 1460, the noun in 1588.

noun/nɪˈɡlɛkt/

  1. The act of neglecting.

    countable · uncountable

  2. The state of being neglected.

    countable · uncountable

  3. Habitual lack of care.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

The verb is inherited from Middle English neglect, neclect, derived from Latin neglēctus, perfect passive participle of neglegō (“to make light of, disregard, not to pick up”), itself from nec (“not”) + legō (“to pick up, select”). The noun is from neglēctus (“neglect”). First attested in 1460, the noun in 1588.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.