absence

UK/ˈæb.s(ə)n̩s/US/ˈæb.s(ə)n̩s/

nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,213 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: absences

Absence is the state of not being there. In his absence, absence from school, a leave of absence.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence is the standard warning against reading too much into what has not been found. Absence makes the heart grow fonder is a proverb rather than a finding. The Latin means being away.

Definitions of absence

1nounabsenceThe state of not being there.B2
“In the manager's absence, her deputy ran the meeting.”

absence is a state.

Where it comes from

Latin absentia comes from abesse, to be away — ab, away, plus esse, to be.

Middle English
absence
English, today
absence

Built from

absēns · Latin — absent
absum · Latin — to be away or absent
ab · Latin — from, away from
sum · Latin — to be

From Middle English absence. From Middle English absence, from Old French absence, ausence, from Latin absentia, from absēns (“absent”), present active participle of absum (“to be away or absent”), from ab (“from, away from”) + sum (“to be”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

absence in the wild

Evidence of absence is evidence of any kind that suggests something is missing or that it does not exist.
Evidence of absence
What counts as evidence of absence has been a subject of debate between scientists and philosophers.
Evidence of absence
When she got there, after an absence of rather more than half an hour, Anne was gone.
The Woman in White· Wilkie Collins

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

the absum family

absence absent

absence — used about once every 528 pages · #3,213 · point at the bar for the others

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