Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Blithe lack of concern; nonchalance.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The quality of being insouciant; heedless indifference or unconcern; carelessness of feeling or manner.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Carelessness; heedlessness; thoughtlessness; unconcern.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun carelessness, heedlessness, indifference, or casual unconcern
  • noun nonchalance

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the cheerful feeling you have when nothing is troubling you

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French insouciance, from in- ("not") + souciant ("worrying").

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Examples

Comments

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  • "When Mr. O'Rourke set out into the world after a youthful Maoist phase (it was, after all, the '60s) there was an element of novelty to his insouciance, and his beliefs, like the larger movement of which he was a part, constituted their own kind of insurgency."

    January 11, 2007

  • Motivated by insouciance, the

    Despatch Clerk idly amuses himself

    correcting the grosser solecisms

    committed by his superiors to

    print in the monthly house magazine (called

    Info-Flo)...

    - Peter Reading, Concord, from Tom O' Bedlam's Beauties, 1981

    June 28, 2008

  • similar to nonchalance

    June 28, 2008

  • similar to nonchalance

    June 28, 2008

  • Why is there no entry for 'souciance'?

    January 2, 2013

  • That's a bit like asking why cockroaches would survive a nuclear holocaust.

    January 2, 2013