leerness

English

Alternative forms

• lereness

Etymology

From Middle English lereness, from Old English lǣrnes (“emptiness”), equivalent to leer (“empty”) +‎ -ness.

Noun

leerness (uncountable)

1. (now rare or obsolete) The quality of being leer; lack; emptiness; dullness.
   • 1865, Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England:

     It cometh from the very chilled maw, or from the too much heated maw, or from too mickle fulness, or of too mickle leerness, that is emptiness, or of evil wet or humour rending and scarifying the maw.

   • 1882, Household Words: A Weekly Journal, volume 3, page 115:

     A feeling of nausea, giddiness, leerness or emptiness, are among the common symptoms of indigestion, and do not require any special description.

   • 1893, Samuel Jones Gee, Auscultation and Percussion:

     The prime property assigned by Skoda to a percussion-sound, its fulness or its leerness (ideas adopted from Laennec) is, in fact, a compound perception, made up chiefly by the duration of the sound.

   • 1896, The Practitioner, volume 57, page 271:

     In the second drawing of the case of Mr. L., however, the small area of “cardiac leerness,” or absolute dulness, corresponds very well to the probable size of the “cardiac” or “relative” dulness in the sense in which I suggest its use.

   • 1917, George William Norris, Henry Robert Murray Landis, Edward Bell Krumbhaar, Diseases of the Chest and the Principles of Physical Diagnosis:

     The more air in a vibrating column the longer the duration of the sound. The "fullness" and the "leerness" of Skoda, terms which are still occasionally employed in German literature, although compound perceptions, depend mainly upon the duration of the vibrations.

   • 2010, Laurence A. Rickels, I Think I Am, page 160:

     […] a film negative, which, having been exposed to unshielded light, had, due to chemical action, turned to absolute opaqueness, to this quality of leerness, this layer of glaucomalike blindness.

Anagrams

• lessener