Carelessness is a failure to take the care that was needed. Sheer carelessness, an act of carelessness, punished for carelessness.
It is the everyday word for what the law calls negligence, and the difference between them is that negligence has a legal standard attached. The care inside it once meant worry, so the older sense of carelessness was freedom from anxiety.
1nouncarelessnessA failure to take the care that was needed.
“The fire was caused by carelessness: someone left a cigarette burning in the bin.”
carelessness is a failing.
Old English carleasnes meant freedom from anxiety. Care meant sorrow or worry before it meant attention.
Old English
carlēasnes
Middle English
*carelesnes
English, today
carelessness
From Middle English carelesnes, from Old English carlēasnes. From Middle English carelesnes, carlesnesse, from Old English carlēasnes (“freedom from care, security, carelessness”), equivalent to careless + ness.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA