Word.ws English Dictionary

preteriteness

preteriteness noun: the quality or state of being past.

Noun

preteriteness (uncountable)

  1. The quality or state of being past.
    • A valley in the moon could scarce have been lonelier , could scarce have suggested more strongly the feeling of preteriteness and extinctionc. 1851-1852, James Russell Lowell, Leaves from My Journal in Italy and Elsewhere

Forms of preteriteness

alternative formpreteritness

Origin of preteriteness

From preterite + -ness.

Questions about preteriteness

What does preteriteness mean?
Preteriteness means the quality or state of being past.
What part of speech is preteriteness?
Preteriteness is a noun.

Words near preteriteness in the dictionary

  1. preterite tense
  2. preterite-present
  3. preterite-present verb
  4. preterite-present verbs
  5. preterite-presents
  6. preteriteness
  7. preterites
  8. preterition
  9. preteritions
  10. preteritive
  11. preteritness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: preteriteness (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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