The word "absentminded" is correct and usable in written English.
It is an adjective used to describe someone who is forgetful or preoccupied, and often unaware of their surroundings. For example, "I found myself absentmindedly staring out the window during class."
There can be increased forgetting as people grow older – for example, forgetting names or being absentminded.
The professor became glum and absentminded, and their usual happy breakfast was ruine An air-raid warning saved the occasion--he had to get to his post.... View Article By Miranda Carter By Jia Tolentino By Doreen St. Félix By George Packer.
Joining Sam behind the bar were the absentminded but lovable Coach (Nicholas Colasanto, 1982 85), an associate from Sam's days with the Red Sox, and, later in the series, Woody Boyd (Woody Harrelson, 1985 93), a naive, dim-witted Hoosier.
In the absence of a formal diagnosis, individuals affected by Asperger syndrome may be perceived as simply absentminded, socially and physically awkward, or highly intelligent.
He was a kind and absentminded man, and on the night when he was stabbed there was a sort of requiem for him in the heating system.
And for paragraphs like these, at the beginning of "Lonely Heart": It seems that one spring day, a character by the name of Nicely-Nicely Jones arrives in a ward in a hospital in the City of Newark, N.J., with such a severe case of pneumonia that the attending physician, who is a horse player at heart, and very absentminded, writes 100, 40 and 10 on the chart over Nicely-Nicely's bed.
His lunch, which he ate on his own in an enormous, empty dining room while reading a book under the absentminded gaze of the elderly maid, and the black-and-white gaze of his deceased wife looking out from photographs in ornate silver frames, was light: soup and a small portion of fish and mashed potatoes, some of which he would allow to go cold.
Surgeons are so busy or so absentminded these days they don't always have time to get all the sponges out, and when the question comes up "Did I, or didn't I, get that last one out?," the only way to solve it has been to perform an operation.
The father was an important cardiologist, revered around the hospital but happily subservient at home, where he would listen to his wife's strange tirades with an absentminded smile.
However absentminded Cass may be, he doesn't seem likely to forget that he will be debating the existence of God with a Nobel Laureate at Harvardand will remember this commitment only the night before the debate.
That's good news for Ms. Kennedy, who has developed the kind of quirky, absentminded habit that's great if you're an eccentric character in a Southern novel, but not if you want to be seen as good roommate (or romantic) material.
