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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

forgetness en · NOUN

Etymology

Possibly continuing Middle English forgetenes (“forgetfulness”); or recreated in modern times from forget + -ness, modelled after forgiveness. Compare West Frisian ferjitnis (“forgetfulness”), Dutch vergetenis (“forgetfulness”).

Meanings

  1. (nonstandard, rare, uncountable) The act of forgetting, or any property associated with it; oblivion; forgetfulness; obliviousness.
    • [...]: he comes to understand God's forgiveness in terms of forgetness, and that recognition brings with it a new understanding of the Christian life of faith as entailing not merely belief but praxis or the expressing of love in community. 2012, Curtis L. Thompson, Joyce M. Cuff, God and Nature:
    • Once those feelings are identified then the people involved need to be sure they are clear on what happened. Finally, there is a decision to move past it and not allow the hurt to continue or to drive their feelings. Forgiveness is not forgetness. 2014, Elise I. Guari, Divorcing with Dignity:
    • If you were to visit a Christian church, you would hear a lot about forgiveness: […]. Instead of forgiveness, it is useful to strive for forgetness, and simply leave behind the pain of the past. 2000, Gavin Frost, Yvonne Frost, The Witch's Magical Handbook:
    • While working they manage to reach a level of what Goleman (1995) calls 'flow', which is a state of 'self-forgetness' as a result of being engrossed in the task at hand. 2008, Shahnaz Bahman, Helen Maffini, Developing Children's Emotional Intelligence:
    • We have not found that such forgetness happened to any of the prophets especially the master and the last of them (peace be upon them). 2014, Abdul-Hussayn Sharafiddeen al-Musawi, Abu Hurayra:
    • Oh, how many of us must charge our hearts to-day with forgetness! 1893, The Pulpit: A Magazine of Sermons, volume 8, page 289:
    • […] but to think of him foundling a nelliza the second, also cliptbuss (the best was still there if the torso was gone) where he did and when he did, retriever to the last — escapes my forgetness now was it dust-covered, […] 1999, James Joyce, Finnegans Wake: