Word.ws English Dictionary

killingness

killingness noun: the quality of being devastatingly attractive.

Noun

killingness (uncountable)

  1. (dated) The quality of being devastatingly attractive.
    • […] especially when these showy garments were set off with a large bunch of flowers in the hand, or on the breast, which most of the young fellows displayed with conscious killingness.1840, Robert Bremner, Excursions in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, volume 1, page 314
    • […] and they daily sent each other little billets, remarkable for the aristocratic contempt which they showed for orthography; and little patterns of head-dresses, quite as remarkable for their grace and "killingness."1854, John Doran, Habits and Men, page 135

Origin of killingness

From killing + -ness.

Questions about killingness

What does killingness mean?
Killingness means the quality of being devastatingly attractive.
What part of speech is killingness?
Killingness is a noun.

Words near killingness in the dictionary

  1. Killingbecks
  2. Killinger
  3. Killingers
  4. Killingholme
  5. killingly
  6. killingness
  7. killingry
  8. killings
  9. Killingsworth
  10. Killingsworths
  11. Killington Peak

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: killingness (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: “killingness.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/killingness. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.