Mindless means done without thinking at all. Mindless violence, mindless repetition, mindless scrolling.
It is usually a criticism and often a strong one: mindless violence is the standard phrase for destruction with no purpose behind it. Applied to a task it can be neutral or even welcome — mindless work is what you do when you cannot think. Note mindlessly; and that mindless and mindful have become opposites in a way neither word originally was, with mindfulness now a whole practice.
1adjectivemindlessDone without thinking at all.
“Sorting the screws into boxes was mindless work, so I listened to music while I did it.”
mindless is a quality of thoughtlessness.
Old English myndleas is mind plus -less and meant foolish or senseless. The compound has been in continuous use for over a thousand years, which is unusual for a word this ordinary.
Old English
myndlēas
Middle English
myndles
English, today
mindless
Built from
From Middle English myndles, myndelees, myndeles, mendlees, from Old English myndlēas, ġemyndlēas (“foolish, senseless”), equivalent to mind + less.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA