Deediness

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Full of purposeful activity; industriousness. uncountable

    "These men, to the number of eighteen or twenty, were not only entirely ignorant of the word "geology," but testified their rustic wonderment that I should spend my time in looking on so eagerly as they drove their wedges into the stony layers, and should watch with such “deediness," as they called it, each fracture they made in the ponderous masses around them."

  2. 2
    Ostentatious busyness; A type of showiness that seeks to seem important. uncountable

    "Occasionally her pretty arm would be waved with the rest of the eager crowd, but it was a gay gesture of jingling bracelets free from smugness or deediness ."

Example

More examples

"These men, to the number of eighteen or twenty, were not only entirely ignorant of the word "geology," but testified their rustic wonderment that I should spend my time in looking on so eagerly as they drove their wedges into the stony layers, and should watch with such “deediness," as they called it, each fracture they made in the ponderous masses around them."

Etymology

From deedy + -ness.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.