informity

Noun

informity (countable and uncountable, plural informities)

1. (obsolete) Absence of regular form; shapelessness.
   • There may I confesse from this narrow time of gestation ensue a minority or smalnesse in the exclusion, but this however inferreth no informity, and it still receiveth the name of a naturall and legitimate birth; whereas if we affirme a totall informity, it cannot admit so forward a terme as an...1650, Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or, Enquiries Into Very Many Received Tenents
   • And again, on the other hand, it does not appear, that this informity ought to mislead the discriminating enquirer, for as soon as he has become conscious of it his greatest danger is over, and a knowledge of the parent tongues, the Anglo Saxon and French, ought to afford a sufficient safeguard...1862, James Gurnhill, The Breeches Bible: Considered as the Basis for Remarks
2. The quality or state of being informed.
   • Indeed, it would have been hard to collect material with more possibilities for differing estimates among teachers who for many years had corrected compositions from a much narrower field and therefore of much greater informity both in technical accuracy and in general character.1912 January, Thurber, “The Hillegas Scale”, in The English Leaflet, number 104, page 6
   • There was little consensus about the degree of informity on religious beliefs, and again pastors rated the patient lower.1965, The Journal of Pastoral Care - Volumes 19-20, page 152