wordness
nounEtymology From word + -ness.
1
The quality of being a word or words.
- The move from purely descriptive, outward directive, writing toward writing centered on its wordness, its physicality, its haecceity (thisness) is, in its impulse, an investigation of human self-sameness, […]c. 1975–1984, Charles Bernstein, “Three or Four Things I Know about Him” (essay), in Content’s Dream: Essays 1975–1984, Northwestern University Press (2001), page 32
- Now, word-ness pertains to all words and is, therefore, regarded as a class (jati) and, so, it is said to be eternal.1980, Gaurinath Bhattacharyya Shastri, A study in the dialectics of Sphoṭa, page 11:
4 more examples
- Accuracy revealed a classic overall RVFA, an overall advantage of words over nonwords and an overall wordness …1988–1989, Brain and reading: structural and functional anomalies in developmental dyslexia with special reference to hemispheric interactions, memory functions, linguistic processes, and visual analysis in reading : proceedings of the 7th International Rodin Remediation Conference at the Wenner-Gren Center, Stockholm and Uppsala University, June 19-22, 1988, page 89
- (Here for once she even includes a word butchered of its wordness to make possible the dreadful rhyme “trois/wha.”)1993, Ulla E. Dydo, A Stein Reader, Northwestern University Press, →ISBN, page 314:
- […] some independent stimulus variable (e.g., Wordness [words, nonwords] in a lexical decision task or Decision [global, local] in a hierarchic perception task) […]1995, Fran Zaidel, "Interhemispheric Transfer in the Split Brain: Long-term Status Following Complete Cerebral Commissurotomy", chapter 17 of Richard J. Davidson and Kenneth Hugdahl (editors), Brain Asymmetry, MIT Press (1998), page 492
- For example, it is possible that when many strong targets are introduced in the list, only strong relations are taken as evidence of wordness, whereas when many related pairs are included, both weak and strong relations would be taken as evidence of wordness.1996, José J. Cañas, María Teresa Bajo, “Automatic and Strategic Processes in Lexical Access”, in Manuel Carreiras, José E. García-Albea, Núria Sebastián-Gallés, editors, Language processing in Spanish, page 76:
- Synonyms
- wordhood