English edit

Etymology edit

collar +‎ -less

Pronunciation edit

  • (file)

Adjective edit

collarless (not comparable)

  1. Of a garment, having no collar.
  2. (obsolete) Of a man, not wearing a detachable collar.
    • 1918, Sinclair Lewis, “Afterglow”, in I'm a Stranger Here Myself and Other Stories, New York: Dell, published 1962, page 81:
      The driver of the jitney was a young, swarthy prairie man, in shirt sleeves, and collarless, with a derby on one side of his head []
    • 1934, George Orwell, chapter 5, in Burmese Days[1]:
      He was pining for England, though he dreaded facing it, as one dreads facing a pretty girl when one is collarless and unshaven.
  3. Of a dog, not wearing a dog collar.
    • 1963, François Mauriac, chapter IX, in Wallace Fowlie, transl., What I Believe, New York: Farrar, Straus & Co., page 118:
      I wandered about Paris like a lost dog, like a collarless dog.
    • 1999, Barbara Smuts in J. M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals, Princeton University Press, page 115:
      I rescued Safi, aged eight months, from an animal shelter where she had been brought as a stray, collarless, without history.

Anagrams edit