Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Sociable character or disposition; inclination to company and social intercourse; sociability.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The quality of being sociable.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state or condition of being sociable.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the relative tendency or disposition to be sociable or associate with one's fellows

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

sociable +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • So they looked, and Mercy wondered; but Christiana said, What a disparagement is it to such a little pretty bird as the Robin-red-breast is, he being also a bird above many that loveth to maintain a kind of sociableness with man; I had thought they had lived upon crums of bread, or upon other such harmless matter.

    The Pilgrim’s Progress, in the Similitude of a Dream; The Second Part. Paras. 100-199 1909

  • He being also a bird above many, that loveth to maintain a kind of sociableness with men.

    Rural Hours 1887

  • And the same may be said of their dispositions, for the wild, and unsociable, and the passionate occur in such a constitution; for frequent excitement of the mind induces wildness, and extinguishes sociableness and mildness of disposition, and therefore I think the inhabitants of

    On Airs, Waters, And Places 2007

  • Mr. Lane does not confound society with sociableness.

    Uncollected Prose 2006

  • Here is a great deal of good company, and abundance of gentry being in the neighbourhood, it adds to the sociableness of the place.

    From London to Land's End 2003

  • Here is a great deal of good company, and abundance of gentry being in the neighbourhood, it adds to the sociableness of the place.

    From London to Land's End 2003

  • Here is a great deal of good company, and abundance of gentry being in the neighbourhood, it adds to the sociableness of the place.

    From London to Land's End 2003

  • The impetus to development Kant found in the restlessness arising from the conflict in man between his social and antisocial tendencies, in what he calls the unsocial sociableness of man, his desire for gain and power, his greed and competitiveness.

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas MORRIS GINSBERG 1968

  • But the kindly sociableness of these Dutch prevented any decidedly vicious tendency among them, and went far toward making amends for any real or supposed laxity in religious principles.

    Woman's Life in Colonial Days Carl Holliday

  • But he that honours a reasonable soul in general, as it is reasonable and naturally sociable, doth little regard anything else: and above all things is careful to preserve his own, in the continual habit and exercise both of reason and sociableness: and thereby doth co-operate with him, of whose nature he doth also participate; God.

    Meditations Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

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