perfunctoriness

English

Etymology

perfunctory +‎ ness

Noun

perfunctoriness (uncountable)

1. The state or characteristic of being perfunctory.
   • 1894, Thomas Hardy, Life's Little Ironies, ch. 6:

     When at dusk she reached the Melchester station her husband was there to meet her, but in his perfunctoriness and her preoccupation they did not see each.

   • 1901, Edith Wharton, "The Recovery" in Crucial Instances:

     Claudia accomplished some shopping in the spirit of perfunctoriness that robs even new bonnets of their bloom.

   • 2006 Nov. 30, David Cohen, "A Bit Nasty to Women, But Respectful to Dishware," New York Sun (retrieved 28 June 2011):

     His hard-core images are delivered with a ho-hum perfunctoriness that often enervates his surfaces. . . . [H]is orgies are inert.

Synonyms

• automaticity, mechanicality, mechanicalness

References

• “perfunctoriness”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.