Word.ws English Dictionary

setness

setness noun: the quality or state of being set; formality; obstinacy.

Noun

setness (countable and uncountable, plural setnesses)

  1. The quality or state of being set; formality; obstinacy.
    • the starched setness of a sententious writer1884, Robert Masters, Memoirs […] of Thomas Baker
    • They who had shrugged their shoulders at her little peculiarities and setnesses […] acknowledged that now she was the exact person that was wanted.1851 June – 1852 April, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), Boston, Mass.: John P[unchard] Jewett & Company; Cleveland, Oh....

Forms of setness

pluralsetnesses

Origin of setness

From set + -ness. Not apparently continuing Old English setnes and Middle English setnesse, which are morphologically identical. First attested in the 1640s.

Questions about setness

What does setness mean?
Setness means the quality or state of being set; formality; obstinacy.
What part of speech is setness?
Setness is a noun.
What is the plural of setness?
The plural of setness is setnesses.

Words near setness in the dictionary

  1. setmine
  2. setmined
  3. setmines
  4. setmining
  5. Setmurthy
  6. setness
  7. setnesses
  8. setnet
  9. setnets
  10. setnetted
  11. setnetter

Source and license

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