disembodied

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɪsɪmˈbɒdiːd/

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disembodied

1. simple past and past participle of disembody

disembodied (comparative more disembodied, superlative most disembodied)

1. Having no material body, immaterial; incorporeal or insubstantial.
   • 1874, Thomas Hardy, chapter XIX, in Far from the Madding Crowd. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], →OCLC:

     Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech.

   • 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter XXI, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC:

     “[W]hen it's over you feel so extraordinarily pure. You feel like a disembodied spirit, immaterial; and you seem to be able to touch beauty as though it were a palpable thing; and you feel an intimate communion with the breeze, and with the trees breaking into leaf, and with the iridescence of the river. […] ”

   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter VIII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:

     You'd have thought that this Wickham would have learned at her mother's knee that the last thing a fellow in a highly nervous condition wants, when he's searching someone's room, is a disembodied voice in his immediate ear asking him how he's getting on. The upshot, I need scarcely say, was that I came down like a sack of coals.

   • 1988 June 2, “Disembodied Melodies”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     Fans who weren't able to get to the Vladimir Horowitz concert at Carnegie Hall might still be able to hear Mr. Horowitz “live,”—if the maestro were willing to play on the computerized piano. Later audiences could sit in the hall and listen to the same piano repeat the same performance by a now-disembodied performer.

   • 2004, Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis Meadows, “The Driving Force: Exponential Growth”, in Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update, →ISBN:

     Information is a wonderful, valuable, disembodied commodity, but it is typically stored in a desktop computer that, as of 1997, was made from 55 pounds of plastic, metal, glass, and silicon; […]

2. Of a body part, separated from the body.
   • 1997, Harvey Danger (lyrics and music), “Old Hat”, in Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?:

     Disembodied ringlets from hair that look like yours

• disembodiedly
• disembodiedness