disinterested

UK/(ˌ)dɪsˈɪntɹɪstɪd/US/dɪsˈɪnt(ə)ɹəstəd/

adjectiveC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,549 of 15,258neutralformal · an editor’s judgement

Disinterested means having nothing to gain, and therefore able to judge fairly. An impartial referee, not a bored one.

This is one of the words careful writers fight over. Strictly, disinterested means impartial and uninterested means bored, and mixing them up loses a useful distinction, since a judge should be disinterested and had better not be uninterested. The loose sense meaning bored is now extremely common and dictionaries record it. The noun disinterest is ambiguous for exactly the same reason, so impartiality is the safer word.

Definitions of disinterested

1adjectivedisinterestedImpartial, with nothing personal to gain.C1
“They wanted disinterested advice, not a sales pitch.”

Where it comes from

Proto-Indo-European
*h₁es-
English, today
disinterested

From disinterest + -ed, or from dis- + interested.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 11 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

disinterested in the wild

For taxable income, courts have defined a "gift" as the proceeds from a "detached and disinterested generosity".
Gift tax in the United States
Some accusations of media bias are motivated by a disinterested desire for truth, some are politically motivated.
Media bias in South Asia
The singing's flat and disinterested, the guitars are on full stun....
(I'm) Stranded (song)
The Francqui Foundation wants to encourage disinterested fundamental research.
Francqui Foundation
The products are bought directly in retail shops to make sure it is disinterested.
DTest

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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.

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