unconsciousness

nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,410 of 15,258neutral

Unconsciousness is the state of being unaware and unable to be roused. Lapse into unconsciousness, a period of unconsciousness, recover from unconsciousness.

It is not sleep, and the difference is that a sleeping person can be woken. Any unconsciousness after a head injury is treated as serious however brief it was, since it means the brain was affected.

Definitions of unconsciousness

1noununconsciousnessThe state of being unaware and unable to be roused.B2+
“She drifted in and out of unconsciousness as the ambulance raced to the hospital.”

unconsciousness is a state.

Where it comes from

From unconscious plus -ness, from Latin conscius, knowing with.

From unconscious + ness or un + consciousness.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

unconsciousness in the wild

Thousands of fatalities occur every year in casualties where the cause of unconsciousness was not fatal, but where airway obstruction caused the patient to suffocate.
Recovery position
The cause of unconsciousness can be any reason from trauma to intoxication from alcohol.
Recovery position
Strangling or strangulation is the compression of the neck leading to an increasingly hypoxic state in the brain, which can lead to unconsciousness or even death.
Strangling
Severing the radial artery can result in unconsciousness in as little as 30 seconds, and death in as little as two minutes.
Radial veins
Despite the name, the stream of unconsciousness occurs more in the form of waves than an actual continuous running stream of dialogue.
Stream of unconsciousness

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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.

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

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