Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The quality or condition of being less; diminution; abatement; inferiority; insignificance; meanness.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun philosophy The state or condition of being less.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

less +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • It's like Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope", but McCain was clever and appended "- lessness" on the end of "Hope"!

    McCain Lampoons Obama: "Audacity Of Hopelessness" 2009

  • Joe Bradley's simple installations (pictured at right) are examples of the "lessness" that underscores the exhibition.

    The Fine Art of Less 2008

  • Whether you call it "lessness," "unmonumental," or simply "life on Mars," it's clear there's a predominating feeling of fragility in the art world right now.

    Canadian Art - Online 2008

  • Whether you call it "lessness," "unmonumental," or simply "life on Mars," it's clear there's a predominating feeling of fragility in the art world right now.

    Canadian Art - Online 2008

  • Whether you call it "lessness," "unmonumental," or simply "life on Mars," it's clear there's a predominating feeling of fragility in the art world right now.

    Canadian Art - Online 2008

  • Whether you call it "lessness," "unmonumental," or simply "life on Mars," it's clear there's a predominating feeling of fragility in the art world right now.

    Canadian Art - Online 2008

  • Whether you call it "lessness," "unmonumental," or simply "life on Mars," it's clear there's a predominating feeling of fragility in the art world right now.

    Canadian Art - Online 2008

  • Whether you call it "lessness," "unmonumental," or simply "life on Mars," it's clear there's a predominating feeling of fragility in the art world right now.

    Canadian Art - Online 2008

  • First it was the clerics forbidding child-lessness, now it's the economists.

    Response: We don't need to de-industrialise to meet our emissions targets 2011

  • If you want her out of your inbox, too, then block her address and enjoy the her-lessness that ensues.

    Carolyn Hax: 'Nose job' adviser should get her nose out of your business 2010

Comments

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  • "Two decades of academic postmodernizing have trailed off into embarrassed silence. One of the show’s curators, Henriette Huldisch, writing in the catalogue, borrows a title of Samuel Beckett’s to characterize the Zeitgeist: “Lessness.�? Not less is more. Less is all—get with it. (Good old Beckett, the never-fail appliance for glamorizing malaise.)"

    - The New Yorker, "Lessness," by Peter Schjeldahl, March 17, 2008

    March 20, 2008

  • The Age of Aquarius, for example, did not bring enlightenment, peace, and love, as we hoped, but professional anxieties and family duties spiced up with AIDS, McJobs, lessness, and biological warfare."

    --Robert B. Laughlin, A Different Universe (Reinventing Physics From The Bottom Down), p.205

    July 18, 2008

  • I'd like to hear what uselessness has to say on this subject...

    July 19, 2008

  • That guy? He never comes around anymore. *sniff*

    July 24, 2008

  • Oh great, *sniff* now I'm crying...

    July 24, 2008

  • Sorry, dont. I know you don't like to. *snuffle*

    July 29, 2008