Word.ws English Dictionary

retheness

retheness noun: the character, state, or condition of being rethe; fierceness; wildness; roughness; harshness; sternness; cruelty.

Noun

retheness (uncountable)

  1. (Now chiefly dialectal) The character, state, or condition of being rethe; fierceness; wildness; roughness; harshness; sternness; cruelty.

Origin of retheness

From Middle English rethnes, from Old English rēþnes (“fierceness, rage, cruelty, severity, zeal, savageness, ferocity, harshness, storminess”), equivalent to rethe + -ness. Cognate with Scots rethnas (“retheness”).

Questions about retheness

What does retheness mean?
Retheness means the character, state, or condition of being rethe; fierceness; wildness; roughness; harshness; sternness; cruelty.
What part of speech is retheness?
Retheness is a noun.

Words near retheness in the dictionary

  1. rethem
  2. retheme
  3. rethemed
  4. rethemes
  5. retheming
  6. retheness
  7. retheorization
  8. retheorizations
  9. retheorize
  10. retheorized
  11. retheorizes

Source and license

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