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friendliness

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Etymology

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From Middle English freendlynesse, frendlynes, equivalent to friendly +‎ -ness.[1]

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /ˈfɹɛndlinəs/
  • Audio (Southern England):(file)
  • Hyphenation: friend‧li‧ness

Noun

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friendliness (usually uncountable, plural friendlinesses)

  1. The quality of being friendly.
    Synonyms: affability, amicability, bonhomie, geniality, pleasantness, amity
    Antonyms: hostility, unfriendliness
    • 1878, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Down the Oise: To Moy”, in An Inland Voyage, London: C[harles] Kegan Paul & Co., […], →OCLC, page 141:
      Finding us easy in our ways, he […] told me a cock-and-bull story with the moral of another five francs for the narrator. The thing was palpably absurd; but I paid up, and at once dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him in his place as an inferior with freezing British dignity. He saw in a moment that he had gone too far, and killed a willing horse; his face fell; I am sure he would have refunded if he could only have thought of a decent pretext.
    • 1923 February 11, Mme. X. [pseudonym], “News of Chicago Society: Now That War’s Over, On with Full Dress, Men”, in The Chicago Sunday Tribune, final edition, volume LXXXII, number 6, Chicago, Ill., →ISSN, →OCLC, part 7, page 5, columns 6–7:
      To foreigners we often seem guileless and overchatty, an impression which is dispersed when they find that much of our friendliness is just the ebullition of the moment and does not carry with it any permanence of devotion.

Coordinate terms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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  1. ^ “friendliness, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
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