subjunctiveness

Noun

subjunctiveness (uncountable)

1. The quality of being subjunctive.
   • The first suggestion resulting is the obvious and simple but profitable one that nothing is achieved by schools unless some connection is influenced, that we cannot assume change in any pupil unless bonds have been made or broken so as to cause him to respond as he did not before. The connection...1914 July 4–11, Edward L[ee] Thorndike, “The Foundations of Educational Achievement”, in National Education Association of the United States, Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the Fifty-Second...
   • The evasion of the responsibility of omniscient understanding, I said, first became crucial in the novels of Henry James; that novelist in the important autumnal part of his colossal lifework situating himself always at a remove or two from his dramatis personae, mostly just overhearing them as...1962, Glenway Wescott, “Talks with Thornton Wilder”, in Images of Truth: Remembrances and Criticism, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Row, →ISBN, →LCCN, pages 268–269

   Synonyms:

   subjunctivity