Englishabsent
adjective
(stress on the first syllable)
1 she was absent from work | an absent parent:
away, off, out, not present, nonattending, truant;
not working, not at work, off duty, on leave, on annual leave;
gone, missing, lacking, unavailable, nonexistent;
Latin in absentia;
informal AWOL;
British on holiday;
British, informal bunking off, skiving;
Australian, New Zealand, informal wagging.
▷antonyms present.
2 his eyes had an absent, dreaming look:
distracted, preoccupied, inattentive, vague, absorbed, abstracted, unheeding, oblivious, distrait, absentminded;
daydreaming, dreamy, dreaming, far away, somewhere else, musing, woolgathering, with one's head in the clouds, in a world of one's own, lost in thought, in a brown study;
blank, empty, vacant, vacuous;
informal miles away, not with us.
▷antonyms attentive, alert.
verb
(stress on the second syllable)