Word.ws English Dictionary

retreatingness

retreatingness noun: the quality of retreating.

Noun

retreatingness (uncountable)

  1. The quality of retreating.
    • The boldness of these bow-windows and the retreatingness of the roof give the house an appearance which would enable the thousands of Dickens' readers all over the world, who only know it from books, to recognise it at a glance […]1897, The Windsor Magazine, volume 5, page 277
    • On account of his great stature, his extreme slimness, his shyness and retiringness — one might say retreatingness — his ruminant habits, his mildness and his gentleness, and the abnormal length of his neck, I used to call him the giraffe.1903, Benjamin Gregory, John Gregory, Autobiographical Recollections, page 293

Origin of retreatingness

From retreating + -ness.

Questions about retreatingness

What does retreatingness mean?
Retreatingness means the quality of retreating.
What part of speech is retreatingness?
Retreatingness is a noun.

Words near retreatingness in the dictionary

  1. retreaters
  2. retreatest
  3. retreateth
  4. retreatful
  5. retreating
  6. retreatingness
  7. retreatings
  8. retreatism
  9. retreatist
  10. retreatists
  11. retreative

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: retreatingness (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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