sordidness

English

Etymology

From sordid +‎ -ness.

Noun

sordidness (countable and uncountable, plural sordidnesses)

1. (uncountable) The quality or state of being sordid.
   • 1648, Walter Montagu, “The Fourteenth Treatise. The Test and Ballance of Filial and Mercenary Love. §. II. Mercenary Love Defined, and the Relying Much on It Disswaded.”, in Miscellanea Spiritualia: Or, Devout Essaies, London: […] W[illiam] Lee, D[aniel] Pakeman, and G[abriel] Bedell, […], →OCLC, page 186:

     [W]e muſt not take this mercifull indulgence given to our defectuoſities, as a diſpenſation for the ſordidnes of our loves, but rather in a holy effect and contention of gratitude, ſtrain to love God the more purely, and irreſpectively to our ſelves, in regard of the tranſcendent benignity of this diſpenſation.

   • a. 1865 (date written), Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Julian Hawthorne, Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret: A Romance […], Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, published 1883, →OCLC:

     Every possible care was taken of him, and in a day or two he was able to walk into the study again, where he sat gazing at the sordidness and unneatness of the apartment, the strange festoons and drapery of spiders' webs, […]

   • 1915, Amy Lowell, Six French Poets: Studies in Contemporary Literature, 2nd edition, The Macmillan Company, page 38:

     A brooding Northerner, Verhaeren sees the sorrow, the travail, the sordidness, going on all about him, and loves the world just the same, […]

2. (countable) The product or result of being sordid.
   • 1864, Katherine F. Williams, “The Rev. Mr. Allonby”, in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, volume XXVIII:

     His was a nature—weak I own—that felt a sordidness in narrow means and their attendants; the ugliness of poverty pained his spirit.