unthriftness

English

Etymology

From unthrift +‎ -ness.

Noun

unthriftness (uncountable)

1. (medicine) The process of wasting away; failure to thrive.
   • 1957, Arthur Laurence Anderson, Raymond William Gregory, Swine Management: Including Feeding and Breeding, page 499:

     The disease is quite generally distributed and may cause considerable loss and unthriftness among pigs when conditions are favorable for its development.

   • 1981, Spooner Sheep Day:

     Health disorders that are treated with adequate selenium include white muscle muscle disease, retained placenta in cattle, reproductive failure, unthriftness and dead or weak offspring.

   • 2002, J[oaquim] Segalés, M[ariano] Domingo, “Postweaning multisystemic wasting syndrome (PMWS) in pigs. A review”, in Veterinary Quarterly, volume 24, number 3, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 111:

     The symptoms include wasting as major sign but also unthriftness, paleness of the skin, respiratory distress, diarrhoea and sometimes icterus.

   • 2022, Jowel Debnath, Duck Production and Management:

     In sub acute and chronic cases, lower doses of aflatoxin produce chronic effects such as lethargy, unthriftness, lameness, hepatitis and delayed death.

2. (India or obsolete) Unthriftiness.
   • 1537, Sir Thomas Wyatt, quoted in Senses of Style: Poetry before Interpretation, by Jeff Dolven, page 106:

     And of my self, I may be a near example unto you of my folly and unthriftiness.

   • 1842, John Bruce, The Works of Roger Hatchinson, page 338:

     Thus you see that impatience causeth idolatry, causeth murder, brought in rebellion and unthriftness, expelled from heaven, and banished out of paradise; which things are registered for our erudition, to teach us sufference, and to beware of anger, of fierceness, of envy, which be the works of the flesh.

   • 1984, T. Paranjothi, Committees and Commissions on Co-operation, page 21:

     It ignores the dangers of unthriftness and extravagance, incidental to too facile credit.

   • 2007, Lucille H. Campey, After the Hector, page 162:

     It was the “unthriftness and offensive indolence” of those who “can well feed and flutter, dress and dandle and carelessly chafe away with toddy and tobacco” which had caused “the Giver of all Good” to send “this disease of the potato."