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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

whitelessness en · NOUN

Etymology

From whiteless + -ness.

Meanings

  1. (uncountable) The absence of white people.
    • Full disclosure: I’m white, and I’ve been intrigued, unhealthily or not, for decades by the whitelessness of Georgetown basketball. 2010 January 27, Dave McKenna, “Cheap Seats Daily: Hoyas Women’s Basketball Has a Feeling of Whitelessness?”, in Washington City Paper:
    • Herb was initially overcome by Jakarta ('The impressions of noise, chaos, tremendous crowdedness and I suppose whitelessness were perhaps the strongest, and I felt something of a stranger') and faced with the familiar conundrum ('again the sensation of the thousands of hungry people all around –happy looking often, pluckily cheerful but in fact hungry –is strange and upsetting'), but he quickly slipped into the volunteer lifestyle with relish, borrowing a bike from Soewarto, a friend from Kempen, and spending a lot of his time with volunteers, including Lance Castles and John Gare. 2011, Jemma Purdey, From Vienna to Yogyakarta:
    • But there is also, on occasion, an under-oxygenated air of fantasy, a shimmering mirage of whitelessness and Asian self-sufficiency. 1999, Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker, page 71:
  2. (uncountable) The absence of the color white.
    • It is Blackless, hence it shares that very quality, Blacklessness, with Whiteness; and it is Whiteless, hence it shares Whitelessness with Blackness . 1999, Alfonso de Toro, Fernando de Toro, Jorge Luis Borges: Thought and Knowledge in the XXth Century, page 180:
    • And the lines "whitelessness" shares the contradictory property with the black spot: it is "whiteless." 2004, Floyd Merrell, “Neither "True" nor "False" nor Meaningless: Meditation on the Pragmatics of Knowing Becoming”, in John R. Shook, Paulo Ghiraldelli, Jr., editors, Contemporary Pragmatism, page 70:
    • So, the white line implies Blacklessness and the black background implies Whitelessness – that is,once the white line, a continuum, has emerged from blackness, also a continuum, and the two continua engage in an “inter-penetrative” (Buddhist term) process. 2014, Torkild Thellefsen, Bent Sorensen, Charles Sanders Peirce in His Own Words: