Word.ws English Dictionary

donness

donness noun: a female don.

Noun

donness (plural donnesses)

  1. A female don.
    • Tom—to use one of his own expressions—shook his feathers and pulled himself together when Philip came in, and, smoking away in earnest, seemed to take the greatest possible interest in the rector's recollections of the dean's dinner and the after "evening," at which Ethel came out so very...1866, Mark Lemon, Falkner Lyle, Or the Story of Two Wives, volume II, London: Hurst and Blackett, Publishers, page 266
    • 'She [Mary Lobel] is a very nice and remarkable woman of the donness class,' Dilly told [Alastair] Denniston.1941 September 17, Mavis Batey, quoting Dilly Knox, Dilly: The Man Who Broke Enigmas, London: Biteback Publishing, published 2010, →ISBN, page 135

Forms of donness

pluraldonnesses
alternative formdoness

Origin of donness

From don + -ess.

Questions about donness

What does donness mean?
Donness means a female don.
What part of speech is donness?
Donness is a noun.
What is the plural of donness?
The plural of donness is donnesses.

Words near donness in the dictionary

  1. donnered
  2. donnering
  3. Donnermeyer
  4. donners
  5. Donnesque
  6. donness
  7. donnesses
  8. Donnetta
  9. Donnette
  10. donnick
  11. donnicker

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: donness (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.

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