Definition of "absent" []

• Not present; missing: absent friends; absent parents. (adjective)
• Not existent; lacking: a country in which morality is absent. (adjective)
• Exhibiting or feeling inattentiveness: an absent nod. (adjective)
• To keep (oneself) away: They absented themselves from the debate. (verb-transitive)
• Without: "Absent a legislative fix, this is an invitation for years of litigation” ( Brian E. O'Neill). (preposition)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Such a Nootka word, for instance, as “when, as they say, he had been absent for four days” might be expected to embody at least three radical elements corresponding to the concepts of “absent, ” “four, ” and “day."
• "Where this is absent, art is absent, _precisely because pure intuition is absent_, and we have at the most, in exchange for it, _that reflex_, philosophical, historical, or scientific."
• "Their _vis-à-vis_ is a lively lady, apparently taking stock of a _bouquet_, but, in reality, joking an absent gentleman, opposite: -- it is Miss Gay, whom Lark (her partner) is making laugh, by observing -- the gentleman is not so _absent_ as he ought to be; causing that lady to forget herself -- making many mistakes and false starts; which, being those of a person who knew better, were very diverting."