n. The quality of being abstruse; difficulty of apprehension. Boyle. [ 1913 Webster ]

{ } n. The state of being fat; fatness. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. The quality or state of being adverse; opposition. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. Vehemence of temper. [ Obs. ] [ 1913 Webster ]

n. [ From Arras. ] A material of wool or silk used for working the figures in embroidery. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. The quality of being averse; opposition of mind; unwillingness. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. The quality or condition of being base; degradation; vileness. [ 1913 Webster ]

I once did hold it a baseness to write fair. Shak. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. See Bascinet. [ Obs. ] [ 1913 Webster ]

. Joseph Hall (1574 -- 1656), Bishop of Norwich, a divine eminent as a moralist. [ Webster 1913 Suppl. ]

n. [ Gr. chryso`s gold. ] (Chem.) One of the higher aromatic hydrocarbons of coal tar, allied to naphthalene and anthracene. It is a white crystalline substance, C18H12, of strong blue fluorescence, but generally colored yellow by impurities. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. The state of being close. [ 1913 Webster ]

Half stifled by the closeness of the room. Swift. [ 1913 Webster ]

We rise not against the piercing judgment of Augustus, nor the extreme caution or closeness of Tiberius. Bacon. [ 1913 Webster ]

An affectation of closeness and covetousness. Addison.

Syn. -- Narrowness; oppressiveness; strictness; secrecy; compactness; conciseness; nearness; intimacy; tightness; stinginess; literalness. [ 1913 Webster ]

adj. made coarse or crude by lack of skill; -- sometimes used to mean inferior. [ WordNet 1.5 ]

n. The quality or state of being coarse; roughness; inelegance; vulgarity; grossness; as, coarseness of food, texture, manners, or language. “The coarseness of the sackcloth.” Dr. H. More. [ 1913 Webster ]

Pardon the coarseness of the illustration. L'Estrange. [ 1913 Webster ]

A coarseness and vulgarity in all the proceedings. Burke. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. The quality of being concise. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. The quality of being dense; density. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. The quality of being diffuse; especially, in writing, the use of a great or excessive number of word to express the meaning; copiousness; verbosity; prolixity. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. One who belongs to a diocese. [ Obs. ] Bacon. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. Dispersedness. [ Obs. ] [ 1913 Webster ]

n. The quality of being diverse. [ 1913 Webster ]

n.; pl. Essenes [ Gr. &unr_;, lit., physicians, because they practiced medicine, fr. Chald āsayā to heal, cf. Heb. asā. ] One of a sect among the Jews in the time of our Savior, remarkable for their strictness and abstinence. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. The state of being false; contrariety to the fact; inaccuracy; want of integrity or uprightness; double dealing; unfaithfulness; treachery; perfidy; as, the falseness of a report, a drawing, or a singer's notes; the falseness of a man, or of his word. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. Harshness or roughness of voice or sound, due to mucus collected on the vocal cords, or to swelling or looseness of the cords. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. The state of being immense. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. The state or quality of being intense; intensity; as, the intenseness of heat or cold; the intenseness of study or thought. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. [ Gr. &unr_; wax. ] An oil used for illuminating purposes, formerly obtained from the distillation of mineral wax, bituminous shale, etc., and hence called also coal oil. It is now produced in immense quantities, chiefly by the distillation and purification of petroleum. It consists chiefly of several hydrocarbons of the methane series, having from 10 to 16 carbon atoms in each molecule, and having a higher boiling point (175 - 325° C) than gasoline or the petroleum ethers, and a lower boling point than the oils. [ 1913 Webster +PJC ]

n. One who, or that which, lessens. [ 1913 Webster ]

His wife . . . is the lessener of his pain, and the augmenter of his pleasure. J. Rogers (1839). [ 1913 Webster ]

adj. 1. having constraints removed.
Syn. -- freed. [ WordNet 1.5 +PJC ]

2. straightened out; untangled.
Syn. -- disentangled, unsnarled. [ WordNet 1.5 ]

n. One who, or that which, loosens. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. The state, condition, or quality, of being loose; as, the looseness of a cord; looseness of style; looseness of morals or of principles. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. Sourness of temper; sulenness. [ 1913 Webster ]

Learn good humor, never to oppose without just reason; abate some degrees of pride and moroseness. I. Watts. [ 1913 Webster ]

☞ Moroseness is not precisely peevishness or fretfulness, though often accompanied with it. It denotes more of silence and severity, or ill-humor, than the irritability or irritation which characterizes peevishness. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. Quality of being obese; obesity. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. State or quality of being obtuse. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. The quality or state of being perverse. “Virtue hath some perverseness.” Donne. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. Extravagance; profusion. [ 1913 Webster ]

Hospitality sometimes degenerates into profuseness. Atterbury. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. Quality or state of being recluse. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. Righteousness. [ Obs. ] [ 1913 Webster ]

In doom and eke in rightwisnesse. Chaucer. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. See Sarcenet. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. pl.; sing. Seneca /sing>. (Ethnol.) A tribe of Indians who formerly inhabited a part of Western New York. This tribe was the most numerous and most warlike of the Five Nations. [ 1913 Webster ]

Seneca grass(Bot.), holy grass. See under Holy. --
Seneca eil, petroleum or naphtha. --
Seneca root, or
Seneca snakeroot (Bot.), the rootstock of an American species of milkworth (Polygala Senega) having an aromatic but bitter taste. It is often used medicinally as an expectorant and diuretic, and, in large doses, as an emetic and cathartic. [ Written also Senega root, and Seneka root. ] [ 1913 Webster ]

‖n. [ L., groundsel, lit., an old man. So called in allusion to the hoary appearance of the pappus. ] (Bot.) A very large genus of composite plants including the groundsel and the golden ragwort. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. [ L. senectus aged, old age, senex old. ] Old age. [ R. ] “Senectitude, weary of its toils.” H. Miller. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. (Med.) Seneca root. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. Gum senegal. See under Gum. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. (Med. Chem.) A substance extracted from the rootstock of the Polygala Senega (Seneca root), and probably identical with polygalic acid. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. [ See Senescent. ] The state of growing old; decay by time. [ 1913 Webster ]

a. [ L. senescent, p. pr. of senescere to grow old, incho. fr. senere to be old. ] Growing old; decaying with the lapse of time. “The night was senescent.” Poe. “With too senescent air.” Lowell. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. [ OF. seneschal, LL. seniscalcus, of Teutonic origin; cf. Goth. sineigs old, skalks, OHG. scalch, AS. scealc. Cf. Senior, Marshal. ] An officer in the houses of princes and dignitaries, in the Middle Ages, who had the superintendence of feasts and domestic ceremonies; a steward. Sometimes the seneschal had the dispensing of justice, and was given high military commands. [ 1913 Webster ]

Then marshaled feast
Served up in hall with sewers and seneschale. Milton. [ 1913 Webster ]

Philip Augustus, by a famous ordinance in 1190, first established royal courts of justice, held by the officers called baitiffs, or seneschals, who acted as the king's lieutenants in his demains. Hallam. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. The office, dignity, or jurisdiction of a seneschal. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. The quality or state of being sparse; as, sparseness of population. [ 1913 Webster ]

n. Wisdom. [ Obs. ] Spenser. [ 1913 Webster ]