Dictionary

massiveness en · NOUN

Etymology

Etymology tree English massive Proto-Germanic *-inōną Proto-Indo-European *-dyé- Proto-Germanic *-atjaną Proto-Indo-European *-tus Proto-Germanic *-þuz Proto-Germanic *-assuz Proto-Germanic *-inassuz Proto-West Germanic *-nassī Old English -nes Middle English -nesse English -ness English massiveness From massive + -ness.

Meanings

1. (uncountable, usually) The property of being massive.
   • There was an oil lamp in all the four huts on Okonkwo's compound, and each hut seen from the others looked like a soft eye of yellow half-light set in the solid massiveness of night. 1958 June 17, Chinua Achebe, chapter 11, in Things Fall Apart, London: Heinemann, →OCLC:
   • A Norman capital can be heavy because the Norman column is thick, and the whole thing expresses an elephantine massiveness and repose. 1920, G. K. Chesterton, chapter 11, in The New Jerusalem:
   • 1914, H. G. Wells, “The Common Sense of Warfare” in An Englishman Looks at the World (U.S. title: Social Forces in England and America), New York: Harper & Brothers, § 2, pp. 163-164, The progress of invention makes both the big ship and the army crowd more and more vulnerable and less effective. A new phase of warfare opens beyond the vista of our current programmes. Smaller, more numerous and various and mobile weapons and craft and contrivances, manned by daring and highly skilled men, must ultimately take the place of those massivenesses.
   • Her height and massiveness in the low room gave her the look of a huge sibyl, while the strange fragrance of the mysterious herb blew in from the little garden. 1896, Sarah Orne Jewett, chapter 2, in The Country of the Pointed Firs:

Forms