dampness

English

Etymology

damp +‎ -ness

Pronunciation

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Noun

dampness (usually uncountable, plural dampnesses)

1. Moderate humidity; moisture; moistness; the state or quality of being damp.
   • 1960 August, R. K. Evans, “Railway Modernisation in Spain”, in Trains Illustrated, page 494:

     With 3,600 h.p. underfoot, acceleration was reasonably brisk, but the flickering wheel-slip indicator light showed the prudence of not putting full power through the traction motors while there were traces of early-morning dampness on the rails.

   • 1982, Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything, page 136:

     They hadn't reckoned with the attendant personality disorders, which the coldness, the darkness, the dampness, the crampedness and the loneliness were doing nothing to decrease.

2. The degree to which something is damp or moist.

   The dampness in the writing paper caused the ink to spread and smudge.

Translations

moderate humidity

• Dutch: vochtigheid (nl)
• Finnish: kosteus (fi)
• French: moiteur (fr) f
• Galician: lentura (gl) f, humidade (gl) f
• Kurdish:

  Central Kurdish: نم (nim), شێ (şê)

• Latvian: mitrums m, miklums m, valgums m, valganums
• Persian: زغار (fa) (zağâr)
• Romanian: umezeală (ro) f
• Russian: вла́жность (ru) f (vlážnostʹ), сы́рость (ru) f (sýrostʹ)
• Swedish: fuktighet (sv) c, fukt (sv)

degree to which something is damp

• Dutch: vochtigheid (nl), vochtigheidsgraad (nl)
• Finnish: kosteus (fi)
• Russian: вла́жность (ru) f (vlážnostʹ)
• Swedish: fuktighet (sv) c, fuktighetsgrad c