If you ask someone for a little favour, e.g. to close his door whenever he's listening to loud music or television, but this person keeps "forgetting" this, always. What is a term to describe this kind of person?
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1My word choice might be a thoughtless person.– Damkerng T.May 25, 2014 at 19:26
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1When you asked them to do this, did they agree to do it at the time or did they ignore or discount the request from the start?– JimMay 25, 2014 at 20:34
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They agreed upon doing it whenever they would turn on loud music. But then always forget it afterwards (nomatter how often you keep asking them.)– user76935May 26, 2014 at 9:43
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I feel that the situation you describe is one thing, and "someone who always forgets about his favours" is something entirely different, at least the way I'd understand that definition. If he's not closing that door, then there simply don't exist any "his favours" to forget, there have been no favours done by anyone. "Forgetting about favours" would mean something like ignoring favours you've done for them and not reciprocating; but the situation you're describing is simply "not keeping promises". I.e., there would be different answers/terms for the 'body' of your question and the title.– PeterisMay 26, 2014 at 10:23
3 Answers
There are many words that can be used; that person could be forgetful, or that person could be discourteous. It depends on if you want emphasize the cause or the effect.
discourteous (adj.) showing rudeness and a lack of consideration for other people
absentminded (adj.) (of a person or a person's behavior or manner) having or showing a habitually forgetful or inattentive disposition
My thesaurus lists these promising synonyms for absentminded:
- distracted, preoccupied, inattentive
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Maybe it's just me but I read the title and content of this question differently. I agree with @user3169 about "inconsiderate" as an answer to the content, but as for "someone who always forgets about his favours" a word that comes to mind is "ingrate". An ingrate is "an ungrateful person".
Depending on whether the person was forgetting through malice or absentmindedness, I'd describe them as either inconsiderate, or forgetful/absentminded.