-ness
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- Appended to adjectives to form nouns meaning "the state of (the adjective)", "the quality of (the adjective)", or "the measure of (the adjective)".
- Appended to words of other parts of speech to form nouns (often nonce words or terms in philosophy) meaning the state/quality/measure of the idea represented by these words.
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Etymology
From Middle English -nes, -nesse, from Old English -nis, -nes, from Proto-Germanic *-nassuz. This suffix was formed already in Proto-Germanic by false division of the final consonant *-n- of the preceding stem + the actual suffix *-assuz. The latter was in turn derived from an earlier *-at(s)-tuz, from the verbal suffix *-at-janΔ + the noun suffix *-ΓΎuz.
Cognates are Old Saxon -nissi, -nussi, Dutch -nis, German -nis and Gothic -π°πππΏπ (-assus), -πΉπ½π°πππΏπ (-inassus).
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Synonyms
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See also
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "-ness" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
