Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The character or habit of being wary; caution; prudent care to foresee and guard against evil.
  • noun Synonyms see wary.

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

  • noun The quality or state of being wary; care to foresee and guard against evil; cautiousness.

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

  • noun vigilance or the condition of being alert
  • noun precautionary forethought to avoid harm or risk

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

  • noun the trait of being cautious and watchful

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

wary +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • Your wariness is understandable, but consider: by appending “once more” to the end of that statement, Obama is stating that he does not consider what Bush did for the last eight years to be the leadership he is talking about.

    Matthew Yglesias » A Friend in Need 2009

  • But the point of this wariness is to discern real continuity and real change, not to avert the idea of continuity itself.

    Culture and Discontinuity (in the 1840s and in Foucault) 2008

  • Again, I understand that this kind of wariness of being "passive" and of being insufficiently skeptical of literary representation when it purports to depict marginalized groups is built into the project of contemporary cultural studies, especially that version that has come to be called postcolonial studies, but at what point does such wariness simply become an impatience with literature altogether?

    The State of Criticism 2008

  • But it was not hostility, exactly; merely a kind of wariness, a momentary stiffening, as at the passing of some unfamiliar animal.

    Nineteen Eighty-four 2008

  • But it was not hostility, exactly; merely a kind of wariness, a momentary stiffening, as at the passing of some unfamiliar animal.

    Nineteen Eighty-four 2008

  • There may be "wariness" about schooling among many blacks, but not among the hundreds of thousands of black parents who are making heroic sacrifices to get their children out of failing public schools and into private schools.

    The Ultimate Emancipation 2007

  • I understand completely the "wariness" so let us have your final thoughts when you have finished - see my recent post 7 books not to buy which included to on Africa neither of which I have read - just some prejudices I have

    A rough week,missing reference points and The State of Africa uknaija 2006

  • Not quite fear, but a kind of wariness, watchfulness.

    Step into Chaos Shatner, William 1999

  • In a statement, the Board said a mood of "wariness" was emerging in the industry following the massacre in Boipatong in the Vaal

    ANC Daily News Briefing 1992

  • A queer look came into the old eyes, a kind of wariness; the deep wells were covered over.

    The Lord of the Rings Tolkien, J. R. R. 1954

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