sordidness

English

Etymology

From sordid +‎ -ness.

Noun

sordidness (countable and uncountable, plural sordidnesses)

1. (uncountable) The state or quality of being sordid.
   • 1882, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Doctor Grimshawe's Secret:

     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 result or product 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.