If there's a quality for which we have an adjective, but the corresponding noun is missing, or is deemed insufficiently evocative, it is always possible to append the suffix ness and give the adjective the desired nounness that will allow it to fit into the appropriate gap in a sentence!
Here we list some odd coinages of words that end with ness:
Some fans are aghast at the idea of remaking a movie defined by its '90s-ness, although the original Clueless was a sort of remake of its own, taking narrative inspiration from the Jane Austen novel Emma.Hailey Gavin, Slate, 26 October 2018.
"Awash down the boat channel and the dark Manasquan River, the night air was fresher than I could've imagined it, a cool, after-rain airishness, an evening to sooth away human troubles."Richard Ford, 'The Sportswriter'.
"What is it this time? My maleness? My Anglo-Saxoness? My Princetoness? My lawyerness?"William Hamilton, caption of a New Yorker cartoon.
"We live 'as if', as if we knew why, as if it made sense, as if in living this way we could banish the question and the as if ness itself, the way we speak and act as if our words could be comprehended."Claire Messud, 'The Last Life'.
If that seemed the last word in assholiness, this seemed a close second.David Sedaris, 'When You Are Engulfed in Flames'.
Young Crosby displayed all the easy-going awshucksness of his late father.Time Magazine.
That's how they're clued, in fact, via their idiomatic meaning - nothing in the clues suggests baseball - which means that the baseballness of it all sneaks up on you and surprises you, in a good way.Rex Parker, 'Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword', 07 May 2021.
Troy Patterson gently chides Chabon for simplifying race, not because of his whiteness per se, but because of his naive and overly idealistic Berkeley-ness.Slate, 19 September 2012.
She tasted sweet, with a bit of biscuitness from the happy-hour beer (she was a beer hound too).Antonio Garcia Martinez, 'Chaos Monkeys'.
"He's blunt-spoken, which is great on nights when there's so much blowhardiness."Rachel Maddow, 01 February 2012.
I think you would get different views on the level of breakthrough-ness of that piece of Java.Steve Ballmer, knee-jerk disparager, quoted by Stephen Segaller in 'NERDS 2.0.1, a Brief History of the Internet'.
The humor oscillates between an ingrown bro-ness, a cackling in the man cave, and something so emancipated and post-everything that it is nearly transcendent.James Parker, in a review of 'Rick and Morty', Atlantic Magazine, September 2018.
"The sales of our products generally track the buzziness of the candidates."The proprietor of an online business that sells T-shirts for presidential candidates.
Brainstorming sessions on cakeishness, held in a special room at the Madison Avenue offices of Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn (painted yellow to stimulate creative thinking) produced a slew of footnotes to Dichter's core insight.Karal Ann Marling, 'As Seen on TV'.
That kind of extreme cartooniness may be fun for her as a performer; I find it less fun as a viewer.Stephanie Zacharek, Slate Magazine, 05 January 2015.
"Forget for a moment the ongoing cultural insanity of deeming female nipples somehow unsuitable for newsstands, while, as Jezebel points out, the racks are lousy with male chestiness."Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon.com, 31 May 2011.
"Hence I not only had a chronic cough, but running was a torment to me. In those days, however, wheeziness or chestiness, as it was called, was either diagnosed as imagination, or was looked on as essentially a moral disorder, caused by overeating."George Orwell, 'Such, Such Were the Joys...'.
Rev. Wright's book paints a different picture. Believers have a Christness - an intersection where there is no difference between themselves and Christ.Description of the Reverend Tom Wright's book 'Christness'.
"He invented words - the Gershenkron term for lack of difficulty was cinchiness - and made suggestive remarks."Nicholas Dawidoff, 'The Fly Swatter'.
But if you must know more, this is a post-modern masterpiece by any measure, including menus, quizzes, notices, graphs, and invented languages, and it is about Blackness and Jewishness and female-ness and coming-of-age-ness, and it is both intellectually challenging and hysterical. I can't believe it took me this long to read it.Emily Temple, the-36-best-old-books-we-read-in-2021, lithub.com, 27 December 2021.
It's a recognition of animals' creatureliness and a quiet argument for their dignity.Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, 28 December 2020.
Here is a sex scene that plays out with Updike-ian cringeiness, told from the woman's point of view.Megan Garber, theatlantic.com, 11 December 2017,
Your attempts at current-ness are sad.Rex Parker, 'Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword', 15 May 2021.
You and Kevin were close, he would confide in you, and lean on you in times of trouble. But I think that was the very reason he recoiled; your insistence, your crowding, your wanting, your cajoling, chummy Daddishness.Lionel Shriver, 'We Need to Talk About Kevin'.
"I think the days of a party exclusively dedicated to deficit hawkishness are waning," this person said.Sahil Kapur, Allan Smith, NBC News, 07 March 2021.
"I told my mom I wanted to be treated like a grown-up and, voila, driviness!"Buffy, clutching the keys of her new car, in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'.
"The first dependency issue to be addressed was the endianness, that is, byte ordering, of the processor. For example, the x86 processor family is little-endian while the SPARC architecture is big-endian."Oracle Solaris 11 Information Library, 'Writing Device Drivers'.
"I enjoyed the film hugely, being hopelessly sentimental myself, but what made a lasting indent on me was the European-ness of the movie background."Bill Bryson, 'Neither Here Nor There'.
"You must leave the discovery of the excitingness to the artists."Aldous Huxley, 'Brief Candles'.
"The infinite strangeness and fascinatingness of this variegated world!"Upton Sinclair, 'Oil!', 1926.
"The first stage is only preparatory; it hides the true and complete representation of a species. The final form embodies the essence of louseness, thripsness, or flyness.Stephen Jay Gould, 'Glow, Big Glowworm', in 'Bully for Brontosaurus'.
Obinze was drawn to his gaucheness; in the young man's clothes, and in the way that he stood, was an outsiderness that he could not shield, even if he had wanted to.Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 'Americanah'.
He wears a special chrysanthemum pin on his collar, which signifies gendarme-ness.Janice Lee, 'The Piano Teacher'.
"Their presence [the World Trade Center towers] was something New Yorkers took for granted, and the depth of that grantedness - a measure of how long they had lurked in our eye - is the depth of the shock that came that morning."Verlyn Klinkenborg, quoted in 'Rubble' by Jeff Byles.
Grids do not go in all directions; they go in two directions. This is ... I mean, this is what defines a grid. The two-direction thing pretty much defines gridness. What the hell?Rex Parker, 'Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword', 31 March 2018.
Doyle inclined his head, as if acknowledging a palpable hit. But that was enough play-acting and guestliness.Julian Barnes, 'Arthur & George'.
As his hitlessness persisted everyone was astonished.Bernard Malamud, 'The Natural'.
There is a tale that he once said to Plato: "I see a horse, but I don't see horseness".Jeremy Campbell, 'The Liar's Tale'.
The author of the translation, Humbert Wolfe, later published it, with an introduction which memorably conveys the madness of working with Korda - the sudden summons by telephone, the bouts of intense work, the subsequent silences, the financial generosity, the charm, the sheer Hungarian-ness of it all.Simon Callow, 'Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor'.
In addition to Rose's self-absorbed hauteur and the Ambassador's energetic lapses of taste, there was the inbredness and in-jokyness of the Kennedy sisters, whose treatment of her she later compared to a sorority hazing.Peter Collier and David Horowitz, 'The Kennedys'.
Americans love World Cup Football. They love the instantness, they like the knockoutness of it.Trevor Noah, on Jerry Seinfeld's 'Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee'.
It is not a portrait in depth; it is, rather, full-length: strong, clear, and solid. Its most remarkable quality is its is-ness.Simon Callow, 'Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor'.
More than anyone else, Young Joe had established their Kennedyness, and his death had caused a metaphysical lurch, raising questions about their ultimate purpose which had previously remained unasked.Peter Collier and David Horowitz, 'The Kennedys'.
Americans love World Cup Football. They love the instantness, they like the knockoutness of it.Trevor Noah, on Jerry Seinfeld's 'Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee'.
"What is it this time? My maleness? My Anglo-Saxoness? My Princetoness? My lawyerness?"Caption of a New Yorker cartoon by William Hamilton.
Only (in my view) it's a less-ness that's as good as anything that happened before - plus it's a lot easier.Richard Ford, 'I'm Here', in 'Let Me Be Frank With You'.
"In a way, I suppose you could say all of us were and are lost, and know it, and we simply try to settle into our lost-ness as comfortably and with as much good manners and little curiosity as we can."Richard Ford, 'The Sportswriter'.
"The first stage is only preparatory; it hides the true and complete representation of a species. The final form embodies the essence of louseness, thripsness, or flyness."Stephen Jay Gould, 'Glow, Big Glowworm', in 'Bully for Brontosaurus'.
She usually found this endearing, though, Russell's physical lurchiness offsetting some of his more effete pretensions.Jay McInerney, 'The Good Life'
Victor Vivian had described her as a blonde, and that word is very evocative, implying beauty and a glamorous femininity, a kind of Marilyn Monroe-ishness.Ruth Rendell, 'A Sleeping Life'.
"'The Conjuring' is an old-fashioned horror movie, almost old-fashioned to the point of meta-ness."Andrew O'Hehir, Salon Magazine, 18 July 2013.
Revolutionary Road hit me harder; even though Leo and Kate's combined star wattage does mean you have to squint occasionally to see the actual movie they're in, I liked the meta-ness of the Titanic couple careening toward an iceberg of the soul.Jessica Winter, Slate, 06 January 2009.
No, I’m bothered more by the film's indulgent meta-ness - the characters here act as if they know they're making an all-time classic, and not just another screen-filler of a studio picture, which, according to factual accounts, is exactly what Warner Bros. thought they had.John Serba, 'Stream It or Skip It', 26 March 2020.
In France at least, the era of Restoration was over, along with the Bourbon dynasty. The rule of middlingness took over.Michael Burleigh, 'Earthly Powers'.
There was none of the missionariness of Victorian matrons about her.Adrian Desmond, in 'Huxley'.
In finance, moneyness is a measure of the degree to which a derivative is likely to have positive monetary value at its expiration, in the risk-neutral measure.
In fact, it's really the stack of COTILLARD and WILEY POST, not far from EDWARD I and PANETTA, that creates the illusion of overall name-iness.Rex Parker, 'Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword', 23 July 2022.
Above all, he [John Edwards] comes off as a huge booster of online video, believing its nonstopness will keep him from resorting to platitudes.The New York Times, 12 August 2008.
"Gould had come to hate the risk taking associated with live performances and grew tired of what he called the non-take-two-ness of the concert experience."Katie Hafner, 'A Romance on Three Legs'.
Nounness, gender, class and syntactic structure in Italian nounsTitle of an article by Nicola Lampitelli, January 2008.
I am talking about this clue more than it warrants, but its slight offness is grating.Rex Parker, 'Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword', 07 April 2018.
But before moving on to the next episode of ohmygodness, it is worth considering that this constant, daily, often more than once-a-day, pileup of events - each on cancelling out the one before - is the true aberration and novelty at the heart of the Trump presidency.Michael Wolff, 'Fire and Fury'.
Even some Democrats grudgingly conceded the general OK-ness of things.Elaina Plott, New York Times, 04 May 2021.
Regrettably, he bore neither the intelligence nor the savoir-faire to make up for his old-fogyishness.Jerrold Packard, 'Victoria's Daughters'.
I need ("need") to go watch "All That Jazz" now. Because, well, it's on, and the mere fact of on-ness adds an artificial sense of urgency to which I am succumbing.Rex Parker, 'Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword', 26 March 2022.
It's tense and uncomfortable being the gaping outsider, and if I fully commit to this quest, I'll be committing myself to outsiderness for a long time.Shari Caudron, 'Who Are You People?'.
"No, it was her dreadful palliness which offended me; the implication that she and I could have something in common, that one day, perhaps, we could be friends."Joanne Harris, 'Gentlemen and Players'.
"I'm definitely at 25 percent peakness."A high school student musing in 'Euphoria', Season 1, Episode 8.
Or you could read it as a trickier and trendier sort of work, which flawlessly mimics old-school plottiness, readability and character development in order to seduce you into realms of bottomless geopolitical-spiritual disquiet.David Gates, 'American Gothic', a review of Jonathan Franzen's 'The Corrections'.
BEERGARITA = never heard of it in any context ever (17A: Corona with tequila and fruit juice, e.g.). I mean, I seeeeee the portmanteauiness of it all, now, but that answer (and drink, I assume) is barf.Rex Parker, 'Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword', 07 April 2018.
Geach couldn’t have anticipated the current moment of truthiness and post-factiness and generalized political postmodernism.Megan Garber, The Atlantic, 23 December 2016.
"What is it this time? My maleness? My Anglo-Saxoness? My Princetoness? My lawyerness?"Caption of a New Yorker cartoon by William Hamilton.
Quantum coherence is essentially what permits quantumness.Philip Ball, The Atlantic, 20 November 2018.
She produces lengthy documents that have an air of referenciness, with nice little superscript numbers, which talk about trials and studies and papers.Ben Goldacre, 'Bad Science'.
Yet there was also something immemorial about the right-angledness of its leaving, the flexibility of something so huge.Philip Hoare, 'The Whale'.
"This big-picture repetitiveness is paralleled by Spielberg's little touches, which are presented with a similar sameyness.Bill Wyman, Slate Magazine, 30 January 2012.
The whole world of EMONEY (if that's what you insist on calling it) reeks of bro-commerce and scamminess.Rex Parker, 'Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword', 14 May 2021.
The weight gain, the schlumpiness, the woe-is-me demeanor, the unfathomable yin to the yang of her graduation and preparation for college: it was all just puppy love.Jonathan Miles, 'Want Not'.
As I say, though, the puzzle seems to handle all the Scrabbliness OK.Rex Parker, 'Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword', 09 January 2021.
There are moments in Shakespeare's late language when one could say with Kermode that Shakespeare's mind is racing too fast for his scriptiveness to completely catch up.Ron Rosenbaum, 'The Shakespeare Wars'.
The fact that it's dark, you can't quite see the shitholeness.The character Jim Henderson in the movie 'Blue Jay'.
Maybe that latter repetition is a *good* thing, looked at from a certain angle - think of it as deliberate rhyme, or echoing, or singsonginess.Rex Parker, 'Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword', 22 July 2021.
From the moment we met we had recognized in each other the same restlessness, the same dissatisfaction with our surroundings, the same skin-doesn't-fit-ness.Jamaica Kincaid, 'Lucy'.
The spectacle-grim-oddness of the whole bewilderment might require an entirely new emotion - a fresh phylum of feeling, matched by a new species of lingo.Richard Ford, 'I'm Here', in 'Let Me Be Frank With You'.
"None of Charlotte's fabricated sphinxishness; a real mystery."Aldous Huxley, 'Brief Candles'.
Hulu's new show from the creator of Luther is a totally bonkers melange of sci-fi scenarios, global doom, and stabbiness.Atlantic online magazine, 7 March 2018.
And like a pilgrim at Agra, I'm struck by my former house's solid staionary-ness, a wreck held in place only by its great weight.Richard Ford, 'I'm Here', in 'Let Me Be Frank With You'.
What struck me then, and does so even more as I try to reimagine what I saw, is the surroundness of it all.Philip Hoare, 'The Whale'.
"The first stage is only preparatory; it hides the true and complete representation of a species. The final form embodies the essence of louseness, thripsness, or flyness.Stephen Jay Gould, 'Glow, Big Glowworm', in 'Bully for Brontosaurus'.
In its economy and accuracy the performance is a complete refutation of any accusations of self-indulgence or tricksiness.Simon Callow, 'Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor'.
They show that while Trump's foreign policy has become more conventional in certain ways - cozying up to America's traditional Arab partners in the Middle East and toning down his anti-Islam rhetoric - his essentially Trumpiness still has potential to create serious headaches in US foreign policy.Vox Magazine, 26 May 2017.
Geach couldn’t have anticipated the current moment of truthiness and post-factiness and generalized political postmodernism.Megan Garber, The Atlantic, 23 December 2016.
They are youthful without that extreme "look at me being youthful!" try-hardness that comes from over-reliance on generation-specific proper nouns.Rex Parker, 'Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword', 05 March 2022.
Vanessa glowed so bright that she seemed to take up an extra layer of attention, and suddenly the conversation shifted to her conscious-less twenties-ness.Taffy Brodesser-Akner, 'Fleishman is in Trouble'.
The results: Master's universities invoked their prestigious university-ness more often than universities that offered Ph.D.s.Slate Magazine, 23 July 2014.
I have always been rather proud of my un-nagginess.Gillian Flynn, 'Gone Girl'.
"The usual demoralizing firestorm of speeding cabs, banging lights and owl-voiced urban-ness has yet to send me careening into the toe-squeezing funk of complication and obscurity, in which everything becomes too important and too dangerous to be tolerable."Richard Ford, 'The Sportswriter'.
Look, HOLD A SEANCE is not exactly EAT A SANDWICH in its arbitrary verb-phrasiness, but it's definitely EAT A SANDWICH-esque.Rex Parker, 'Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword', 05 November 2022.
Within the limits imposed by washer-ness and stove-hood, color, applied decoration (or the lack thereof), and angular vs. curvilinear shape became the weapons of the "merchants of discontent".Karal Ann Marling, 'As Seen on TV'.
The chosen theme of the Munich security conference - once a party for Nato and now a Davos for the world’s diplomats - was westlessness. The organisers wanted to capture the fear that the west is now so divided and challenged by the rise of China its whole existence has become imperilledPatrick Wintour, The Guardian, 16 February 2020.
There was no other concentrated winciness, though, that I could see.Rex Parker, 'Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword', 10 October 2020.
Susan's tennis game comes back to me. Mine - as I may have said - was largely a self-taught business, relying on wristiness.Julian Barnes, 'The Only Story'.
First, as I've said, he camouflages his writerliness and the style reproduces accurately the emotional distress.Philip Roth, 'The Counterlife'.
Arguments about the nature of judicial review and appropriate methods of constitutional interpretation based on the writtenness of the Constitution date back at least to Marbury v. Madison.Andrew Coan, 'The Irrelevance of Writtenness in Constitutional Interpretation'.
The lettering of Berra's name, a unique typography Alcala had commissioned from a lettering artist for this project, was adjusted some as well, as were a few other details, to achieve what Alcala called "a greater sense of Yoginess."Rob Neyer, The New York Times, 04 July 2021.
Seeking deliverance from terminal you-ness, from utter cranial confinement, you can either get your head chopped off like Lacenaire or abandon yourself to love - as Raskolnikov does in the not-very-convincing epilogue to Crime and Punishment.James Parker, 'Why Did Dostoevsky Write Crime and Punishment?', Atlantic, November 2021.