Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The quality or condition of being unlike.
  • noun An instance of unlikeness; a difference. synonym: difference.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Want of resemblance; dissimilarity.

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

  • noun The quality or state of being unlike; want of resemblance; dissimilarity.

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

  • noun uncountable the state of being unlike
  • noun countable an unlike characteristic

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

  • noun dissimilarity evidenced by an absence of likeness

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

unlike +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • But tell me, Zeno, do you not further think that there is an idea of likeness in itself, and another idea of unlikeness, which is the opposite of likeness, and that in these two, you and I and all other things to which we apply the term many, participate-things which participate in likeness become in that degree and manner like; and so far as they participate in unlikeness become in that degree unlike, or both like and unlike in the degree in which they participate in both?

    The PARMENIDES Plato 1934

  • But tell me, Zeno, do you not further think that there is an idea of likeness in itself, and another idea of unlikeness, which is the opposite of likeness, and that in these two, you and I and all other things to which we apply the term many, participate -- things which participate in likeness become in that degree and manner like; and so far as they participate in unlikeness become in that degree unlike, or both like and unlike in the degree in which they participate in both?

    Parmenides 427? BC-347? BC Plato 1855

  • Antioch (341), adding explanations against the "unlikeness" of the

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 13: Revelation-Stock 1840-1916 1913

  • He could account for his isolation, his unlikeness to everything that existed around him.

    Marilynne Robinson: Religion, Science and the Ultimate Nature of Reality 2010

  • He could account for his isolation, his unlikeness to everything that existed around him.

    Marilynne Robinson: Religion, Science and the Ultimate Nature of Reality Marilynne Robinson 2010

  • But in its unlikeness to God and its dependence upon him it is a confined or restricted emanation.

    Dietrich of Freiberg Führer, Markus 2009

  • This fond affection of clever women for fools can be explained only by the law of unlikeness which mostly governs sexual unions in physical matters; and its appearance in the story gives novelty and point.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Here the craftsman's labor is a medium of likeness between man and the divine Artifex as well as a means of transgression that, when it overreaches its limit through an impossible copying of what is beyond it, produces the greater unlikeness of the hyper-mimetic hybrid as a secondary, grotesque creation.

    Archive 2008-02-01 The Medieval Club of New York 2008

  • Here the craftsman's labor is a medium of likeness between man and the divine Artifex as well as a means of transgression that, when it overreaches its limit through an impossible copying of what is beyond it, produces the greater unlikeness of the hyper-mimetic hybrid as a secondary, grotesque creation.

    . . . and the Baby-Chopper Nicola Masciandaro 2008

  • But all I experience are the symptoms of withdrawal from the self I have labored a lifetime to create -- what the medieval Cistercians called "the land of unlikeness" hiding the true self that Scripture says is created in God's image.

    Retreat Into Silence 2008

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