downiness

• “And above the organ rose the notes of a voice; high, soft, enveloped in a kind of downiness, like a cloud of incense, and which ran through the mazes of a long cadence.”

  Hauntings

• “When a thought came unbidden: all she needed was a man to come up behind her and kiss the nape of her neck, where the soft downiness of her hair met the cool creaminess of her skin.”

  Simon & Schuster: Winter Bloom

• “Heads that are so downy soft as to keep my hand in motion, patting, stroking, taking and giving comfort at the same time as it is drawn to the tenderness of skin, the downiness of the hair.”

  The Thing About Babies

• “He is determined by his gestural artistry and resilient thistle-downiness to "sanction and fortify the natural human passion for believing that life can somehow, behind all the miseries and the mysteries, mean something profoundly worth while.”

  Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, 1920-04-21

• “The habit of the shrub is densely bushy, and the foliage has a greyish green colour from its downiness.”

  Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, Rockeries, and Shrubberies.

• “The foliage, as before hinted, is in the form of a whorl, there being no root leaf, and the soft appearance of the whole plant is due to its downiness, which extends to and includes the calyx.”

  Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, Rockeries, and Shrubberies.

• “The poplar foliage had the downiness of a Corot arbor; the green and silver trunks were as candid as the birches, as slender and lustrous as the limbs of a Pierrot.”

  Main Street

• “A baby that's loved and taken care of is just nothing but fine soft lawns and white downiness with the scent of fresh violets under leaves in the rain.”

  Robin

• “He aimed well, and grabbed it, but only to feel the delicious downiness and dumpiness slipping through his fingers as he fell upon his face.”

  Jackanapes

• “I ever yet tried to make it one myself; yet there are certain qualities of downiness in ducks, fluffiness in owls, spottiness in thrushes, patchiness in pies, bronzed or rusty luster in cocks, and pearly iridescence in doves, which I believe may be aptly brought into connection with other defining characters; and when we find an entirely similar disposition of plumage, and nearly the same form, in two birds,”

  Love's Meinie Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds

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