unbusinesslikeness en · NOUN
Etymology
From unbusinesslike + -ness.
Meanings
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(uncountable) The quality or condition of being unbusinesslike.
The unbusinesslikeness of the profession of prostitution is considered very amusing by men. At a fire in the whorehouse, the Madam screams: "Where's that wench with the towels? If she's gone, my accounting system is shot to hell!"
1968, G[ershon] Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor, New York, N.Y.: Bell Publishing Company, published 1975, page 232:Miss Hill is killing herself with conscientiousness and, as you so truly said, with unbusinesslikeness, and to no purpose for anybody.
1874 May 14, Florence Nightingale, “Letter to Henry Bonham Carter”, in Lynn McDonald, editor, Florence Nightingale: Extending Nursing, Waterloo, O.N.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, published 2009, →ISBN, page 653:When elected officials saw their loss reduction decisions from within the frame of "unbusinesslikeness," they quickly approved spending money on uniform business cards.
1999 June, Dennis Gilbride, Robert Stensrud, “Demand-Side Job Development and System Change”, in Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin, volume 42, number 4, Alexandria, V.A.: American Rehabilitation Counseling Association, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 338:They complain, it is true, not so much of actual wilful dishonesty—though of that, too, they affirm there is plenty—as of pettiness, constant shillyshallying, unbusinesslikeness almost passing belief.
1890, Basil Hall Chamberlain, Things Japanese: Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., page 184:You will no more avoid failure by systematic unbusinesslikeness, than you will secure success by strict attention to business.
1895, George Saintsbury, “Three Mid-Century Novelists”, in Corrected Impressions: Essays on Victorian Writers, 2nd edition, London: William Heinemann, pages 176–177: