a. [f. STRUCTURE sb. + -LESS.] Lacking organic structure.
1847–9. W. H. Walshe, in Todd’s Cycl. Anat., IV. 104/1. Granular matter lying in a structureless substance.
1856. Ruskin, Mod. Paint., IV. V. xiii. § 4. That structureless and massive rock which we have characterized by the term ‘compact crystalline.’
1879. Haeckel’s Evol. Man, II. xv. 33. It is only in the case of Monera,—of structureless organizations without organs—that we can assume the hypothesis of spontaneous generation.
1896. Tablet, 1 Feb., 161. The structureless creed of the Board schools.
Hence Structurelessness.
1859. Huxley, in Todd’s Cycl. Anat., V. 476/1. The structurelessness of a homogeneous membrane.
1892. Nation (N.Y.), 7 April, 263/1. It is a fact which absolutely overthrows the whole theory of poetic structure or structurelessness implied in Whitman’s volumes, that his warmest admirers usually place first among his works the poem on Lincoln’s death, ‘My Captain,’ which comes so near to recognized poetic methods that it actually falls into rhyme.
