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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

seventeenness en · NOUN

Etymology

From seventeen + -ness.

Meanings

  1. (rare, uncountable) The property of being seventeen.
    • Might not some language somewhere offer a seventeenness category that would create immediate recognition of that many items? Such a category seems unlikely, of course, and we might see it as excluded by capacity limitations on focal consciousness, limitations that would be far exceeded by a display of seventeen items. 2013, Shannon Bischoff, Carmen Jany, Functional Approaches to Language, page 126:
    • It was the first time in all the largesse of her youth that such a tone had assailed Zoe. The very seventeenness of her revolted; she dropped her attitude. 1921, Fannie Hurst, Stardust: The Story of an American Girl:
    • None of these descriptions seems to give you a clue to the intrinsic seventeenness of 17 – the unique feature which makes it the very number that it is. 1999, Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope: