Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The character of being a half or an incomplete state of something; the state of not being a whole or of being partial; incompleteness; imperfection.
Wiktionary
- n. The quality of being half; incompleteness.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. rare The quality of being half; incompleteness.
Etymologies
- half + -ness (Wiktionary)
Examples
“There was a "whole heap" (to use a Kentucky phrase) of "halfness" in that State during the war for the Union, and there was much more there after the war.”
“Without a turn such as that, and without the additional work of extending that bit of language into a larger dramatic whole, the anecdote amounts to little more than a clever but trivial riff on “halfness.””
“Solitude has austere lessons; it can teach us to spare both heroes and poets; and it weighs Shakespeare also, and finds him to share the halfness and imperfection of humanity.”
“In the former there is a “wholeness” to the participation; in the latter there is a “halfness” because the producer rarely receives more than 50% of 100% of the net profits or some commensurate amount of gross.”
“And was it her sacred duty to sit beside him in the green dress of Malintzi, in the church, the goddess admitting her halfness?”
“Doubleness, it is clear, is the cause of a thing being double, and from it is derived halfness.”
“But as soon as there is any departure from simplicity and attempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, my neighbor feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine; there is war between us; there is hate in him and fear in me.”
“This strange sense of fatality in Gerald, as if he were limited to one form of existence, one knowledge, one activity, a sort of fatal halfness, which to himself seemed wholeness, always overcame Birkin after their moments of passionate approach, and filled him with a sort of contempt, or boredom.”
“He revolted at halfness, abhorred compromise, and demanded that men should be either hot or cold.”
“After all the homage which Emerson pays to the intellect of Shakespeare, he weighs him with the rest of mankind, and finds that he shares “the halfness and imperfection of humanity.””
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘halfness’.
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Quenelles of Random Palavery
More randomly-garnered terms from the world of words that don't quite yet fit into my other lists.
Goddidit, barcelona, filigrain, good-natured, ill-natured, half-bit, endosome, underplaying, parotid, denormalization, sleightgeist, wheezing and 2334 more...
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