Word.ws English Dictionary

lankness

lankness noun: the property of being lank, slender or thin.

Noun

lankness (countable and uncountable, plural lanknesses)

  1. The property of being lank, slender or thin.
    • The boy's lankness reflected his malnutrition.
    • The gravity of his dress, together with a certain lankness of cheek and stiffness of deportment, added nearly ten years to his age, but his figure was that of one not yet past thirty.1841 February–November, Charles Dickens, “Barnaby Rudge. Chapter 35.”, in Master Humphrey’s Clock, volume III, London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC
  2. The property of being lank: straight, flat and limp. (of hair)
    • Linen, from what œconomy I know not, is seldom allowed in those portraits, even to the ladies, who lean carelesly on a bank, and play with a parrot they do not look at, under a tranquillity which ill accords with their seeming situation, the slightness of their vestment and the lankness of their...1771, Horace Walpole, chapter 1, in Anecdotes of Painting in England, volume 4, page 2

Examples of lankness in a sentence

  • Venuses indeed!—say rather limp-lanknesses seen through a burnt-sienna fog in a classical dream after falling asleep over one of Racine’s tragedies.1856 November 15, “Turner’s Pictures at Marlborough House”, in The Athenæum, number 1516, page 1407:
  • When he turned inquiringly toward them they saw that he was stoop-shouldered; though not from any deformity, but from sheer, slouching lankness.1914, B. M. Bower, chapter 8, in Flying U Ranch:

Forms of lankness

plurallanknesses

Origin of lankness

From lank + -ness.

Questions about lankness

What does lankness mean?
Lankness means the property of being lank, slender or thin.
How do you use lankness in a sentence?
Venuses indeed!—say rather limp-lanknesses seen through a burnt-sienna fog in a classical dream after falling asleep over one of Racine’s tragedies.
What part of speech is lankness?
Lankness is a noun.
What is the plural of lankness?
The plural of lankness is lanknesses.

Words near lankness in the dictionary

  1. lanking
  2. lankish
  3. lanklet
  4. lanklets
  5. lankly
  6. lankness
  7. lanknesses
  8. lanks
  9. lanksome
  10. lanky
  11. Lanlivery

Source and license

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