recklessness

a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.

an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance.

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Collins

World English Dictionary

reckless (ˈrɛklɪs)

—*adj*
	having or showing no regard for danger or consequences; heedless; rash: a reckless driver; a reckless attempt

[Old English recceleās (see reck, -less); related to Middle Dutch roekeloos, Old High German ruahhalōs]

'recklessly

—*adv*

'recklessness

—n

reckless (ˈrɛklɪs)

—*adj*
	having or showing no regard for danger or consequences; heedless; rash: a reckless driver; a reckless attempt

[Old English recceleās (see reck, -less); related to Middle Dutch roekeloos, Old High German ruahhalōs]

'recklessly

—*adv*

'recklessness

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

reckless

O.E. receleas "careless, thoughtless, heedless," earlier reccileas, from -leas "-less" + *rece, recce "care, heed," from reccan "to care," from W.Gmc. *rokijanan (cf. O.N. rækja "to care for," O.H.G. giruochan "to care for, have regard to," Ger. geruhen "to deign," which is infl. by ruhen "to rest").

No known cognates outside Gmc. The same affixed form is in Ger. ruchlos, Du. roekeloos "wicked." Root verb reck (O.E. reccan) is passing into obscurity. The -k- sound is probably a northern influence from O.N. cognate roekja.

Example sentences

All write with verve and recklessness, which they combine with extraordinary

erudition.

It provides a uniform definition of criminal recklessness, the culpable mental

state of numerous offenses.

She admired wit, recklessness, and the crushing intellectual arrogance with

which she had been familiar all her life.

By then the argument will be less about the added benefits than about fiscal

recklessness.

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Related Words

desperation hopeless lunatic

lunatic reckless

Matching Quote

"The American novel tends to rest in contradictions and among extreme ranges of experience. When it attempts to resolve contradictions, it does so in oblique, morally equivocal ways. As a general rule, it does so either in melodramatic actions or in pastoral idylls, although intermixed with both one may find the stirring instabilities of "American humor." These qualities constitute the uniqueness of that branch of the novelistic tradi tion which has flourished in this country. They help to account for the strong element of "romance" in the American "novel." By contrast, the English novel has followed a middle way. It is notable for its great practical sanity, its powerful, engrossing composition of wide ranges of experience into a moral centrality and equability of judgment. Oddity, distortion of personality, dislocations of normal life, recklessness of behavior—these the English novel has included. Yet the profound poetry of disorder we find in the American novel is missing, with rare exceptions, from the English."

-Richard Chase