Dictionary

separateness en · NOUN

Etymology

Etymology tree English separate 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 separateness From separate + -ness.

Meanings

1. (uncountable, usually) The property of being separate.
   • Professor Marty saw Americans retreating into “separatenesses” by choice, and he worried, with Reinhold Niebuhr, that “the chief source of man’s inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to the other man.” 2020 July 11, David W. Blight, “Confronting the Damage of Trumpism”, in The New York Times:
   • In “The Liberation,” a 30‐yearold^([sic]) college teacher breaks out of the psychic loneliness of a smothering family into the redeeming sense of her separateness; she had been kept from the person she really was. 1964 November 10, Jean Stafford, “Breaking Out Of Isolation”, in The New York Times:
   • A prideful sense of separateness prevails toward what Mrs. Moskowitz called “frenetic” Manhattan and “the hipper parts of Brooklyn.” 2008 November 14, Gregory Beyer, “Isolation Is Pretty Splendid”, in The New York Times:

Forms