Forum: ell.stackexchange.com
Tags: <word-usage><word-choice><word-request>
Title: 'Strong' presence, but ________ absence?
Question: What would be a good collocation to emphasize the absence of something. A 'strong absence' sounds a bit oxymoronic to me.  I want to talk about the absence of certain important aspects in someone's critique of something. Sorry, the context is kind of complex. I think 'striking' may do

Answers:
sents: text: "Marked absence" maybe? "striking" as suggested above also seems to work. "
text: Complete" absence seems good for situations where there's a continuum from present to absence ("Complete absence of calories")
text: but less so for say whether an extroverted friend comes to a party ("strong presence") or not ("marked absence").
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/12377/Michael Scott Cuthbert
score: 20
sents: text: The first thing coming to mind after complete absence was conspicuous absence , and Google ngrams seems to support my instinct that it is more common than other solutions (besides "complete"): Though "complete" is more common, it seems to me that it is also more neutral.
text: If I wanted to emphasize the obviousness or strikingness of an absence, I would use "conspicuous."
text: "Marked" and "noticeable" could be considered of the same flavor.
text: If I wanted to emphasize the completeness of an absence, I would pick "complete" or "total," or even "utter."
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/9332/rschwieb
score: 16
sents: text: A "complete absence" sounds natural to my (American) ear.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/9100/Jasper
score: 8
sents: text: A noticeable absence also works.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/12376/chiliNUT
score: 7
sents: text: I have seen the phrase "A palpable absence" used in various contexts.
text: It is somewhat figurative, since the literal meaning of palpable is "able to be touched or felt".
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/5647/Boluc Papuccuoglu
score: 4
sents: text: A sound can be weakly or strongly present, but it can only be absent in one way.
text: 'Strongly present' describes the sound; if there is no sound, I think you need to be describing people's reaction to the lack of sound, or the remaining scene.
text: In my example, the silence isn't strong , but it might be remarkable , or enveloping , or notable or surprising or unexpected or unbelievable or unbroken or all-encompassing .
text: Geoff had a strong presence; the group strongly felt his absence.
text: Company A put in a strong presence at the trade show, Company B was totally absent .
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/12381/TessellatingHeckler
score: 3
sents: text: Glaring.
text: A glaring absence.
text: It sounds natural to me, though Google doesn't return that many results.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/4741/Dan Dascalescu
score: 1
sents: text: How about...
text: A telling absence?
text: The word 'absence' already has some impact when used in a narrative.
text: Remarking on the absence of someone or something offers a wealth of meaning, don't you think?
text: So, the absence may be telling, noticeable, significant, marked, so on and so forth.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/12408/Claire Ponsaran
score: 0

Summary of the answers:
Suggested words include palpable, glaring, telling, complete, conspicuous, marked, and noticeable, as well as striking.
Glaring, telling, palpable, total, conspicuous and complete are options. You can also use marked or noticeable.