Word.ws English Dictionary

offhandedness

US/ˌɑfˈhændədnəs/

offhandedness noun: the property of being offhand.

Noun

offhandedness (uncountable)

  1. The property of being offhand.
    • Your offhandedness is completely inappropriate in such an important situation.
    • In one photograph, a teenaged Leah crouches by a tall cylindrical tank containing what she identified to me as a giant Pacific octopus named Pamela. We were pals, she said, in a voice that I thought seemed to strive for offhandedness, did you know they taste with their skin? Octopuses, I mean.2022, Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea, Picador, page 67

Forms of offhandedness

alternative formoff-handedness

Origin of offhandedness

From offhanded + -ness.

Questions about offhandedness

What does offhandedness mean?
Offhandedness means the property of being offhand.
What part of speech is offhandedness?
Offhandedness is a noun.
How do you pronounce offhandedness?
Offhandedness is pronounced /ˌɑfˈhændədnəs/ (US).

Words near offhandedness in the dictionary

  1. offgoing
  2. Offham
  3. offhand
  4. offhanded
  5. offhandedly
  6. offhandedness
  7. offheld
  8. offhold
  9. offholding
  10. offholds
  11. officah

Source and license

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