Word.ws English Dictionary

-nesse

-nesse is the obsolete spelling of -ness.

Meaning of -ness

Suffix

-ness (noun-forming suffix, countable and uncountable, plural -nesses)

  1. Appended in general, often informally, stylistically, or jocularly, for reification of an attribute.
    • You know you say things are "much of a muchness.." — did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness!1865 Lewis Carrol: Alice in Wonderland; CHAPTER VII: A Mad Tea-Party.
  2. Appended to adjectives to form nouns meaning "the state of being (the adjective)", "the quality of being (the adjective)", or "the measure of being (the adjective)".
    • calm + -ness → calmness
  3. Appended to words of other parts of speech to form nouns (often nonce words or terms in philosophy) meaning the state/quality/measure of the idea represented by these words.
    • that + -ness → thatness

Questions about -nesse

What is -nesse the obsolete spelling of?
-nesse is the obsolete spelling of -ness.

Words near -nesse in the dictionary

  1. -neme
  2. -nephry
  3. -ner-
  4. -nercept
  5. -ness
  6. -nesse
  7. -nesses
  8. -netant
  9. -nicline
  10. -nidazole
  11. -nidipine

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -nesse (page history and authors); -ness (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “-nesse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-nesse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.