careless

adjective

1 careless motorists:

inattentive, incautious, negligent, remiss;

forgetful, absentminded;

heedless, irresponsible, impetuous, reckless;

informal sloppy, couldn't care less, slaphappy.

▷antonyms careful, attentive.

2 an unsatisfactory excuse for incomplete or careless work:

shoddy, slapdash, slipshod, scrappy, slovenly, unconsidered, amateurish, negligent, lax, slack, wild, disorganized;

hasty, hurried, perfunctory, cursory, thrown together, sketchy, hit-or-miss;

inaccurate, imprecise, inexact, incorrect, wrong, erroneous, error-ridden;

informal sloppy, slaphappy, scatterbrained;

British, vulgar slang half-arsed;

North American, vulgar slang half-assed.

▷antonyms meticulous.

3 a careless remark:

thoughtless, unthinking, insensitive, indiscreet, unguarded, ill-advised, ill-considered, ill-thought-out, unwise, misguided, incautious, inadvertent, rash, foolhardy;

hasty, spur-of-the-moment, harebrained.

▷antonyms judicious.

4 they were careless of their personal appearance:

negligent in, mindless of, heedless of, improvident about, unconcerned about, indifferent to, oblivious to;

reckless about, remiss in, slapdash about, slipshod about, frivolous about;

informal sloppy in, messy in.

5 she saw him leaning with careless masculine grace against the wall:

unstudied, artless, casual, effortless, unconcerned, nonchalant, insouciant, languid, leisurely, informal;

informal couldn't-care-less.

choose the right word

careless, heedless, thoughtless

■ Someone who is careless is not giving their full attention to what they are doing, typically in a situation where this could result in harm to themselves or to others (try not to be so careless when you're handling glass | a motorist has been charged with causing death by careless driving). The word may also be used to indicate that someone is relaxed and casual (she moved with careless grace), trying to appear so (she managed to turn the wince into a careless shrug), or genuinely unconcerned about something (he was careless of his own safety).

■ Heedlessindicates that someone is deliberately taking no notice of a factor which might be expected to influence their behavior, either in their own interests (she knelt on the floor, heedless of the cold stone) or in those of others (she brought him to a halt in the middle of the sidewalk, heedless of the passers-by).

■ Thoughtless is generally used to describe something done by a person who is insensitive, either consciously or unconsciously, to the feelings or convenience of others (the thoughtless actions of a few loud-mouthed oafs).