salutariness

English

Etymology

salutary +‎ -ness

Noun

salutariness (uncountable)

1. The state of being salutary.
   • 1771, James Macpherson, “Government of the Ancient British Nations”, in An Introduction to the History of Great Britain and Ireland‎^[1], Dublin: James Williams, page 250:

     The security derived from the innate integrity of men is more pleasing than that which arises from their fears. The nation that boasts of the multiplicity and salutariness of its regulations conveys satire in self-applause; and, though the paradox is not in all cases just, we may venture to affirm, that those who have the best laws often need them the most.

   • 1876, George Eliot, chapter 24, in Daniel Deronda‎^[2]:

     […] Mrs. Gascoigne was disposed to hope that trouble would have a salutary effect on her niece, without thinking it her duty to add any bitters by way of increasing the salutariness.

   • 1907, Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp‎^[3]:

     It is true that the spectacle is painful, horrible; but in pain and horror there is often hidden a certain salutariness, and the repulsion of which we are conscious is as likely to arise from debilitation of public nerve, as from a higher reach of public feeling.