👤 Without a leader 🪑 No chairs

chairless

5.3

A meeting or group without a person to lead it

adjective
/ˈtʃɛr.ləs/

: sin presidente

The committee remained chairless after the unexpected resignation of its leader.

Examples

Important decisions were postponed because the board was still chairless.
A chairless meeting can quickly become disorganized without someone to guide the discussion.
The meeting was chairless due to last-minute cancellations.
During the discussion, we found ourselves chairless.
The committee remained chairless after the unexpected resignation of its leader.
Important decisions were postponed because the board was still chairless.
A chairless meeting can quickly become disorganized without someone to guide the discussion.

Synonyms

leaderless

vschairless

7 5.1

Without a person in charge of a group or team

is narrower used for formal meetings with no appointed presiding officer

Antonyms

leader

∞ 1.0

A person who guides and directs a group, organization, or country

chairperson

15 3.5

A person who leads a meeting, committee, or organization

Surface Forms

chairless positive

Morphology

chairless = chair (semi-transparent) = chair + less

Formally 'chair' + '-less' is clear, but this sense uses 'chair' in the institutional sense 'chairperson', which may not be obvious to learners who know only the furniture sense.

Etymology

Chairless is made of chair and -less, with -less meaning 'without'. A helpful way to remember the first sense is that a chair can mean the person who leads or 'chairs' a meeting, so a chairless committee has no leader to guide the group.