Thingness

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The quality of a material thing; objectivity; actuality; reality. uncountable, usually

    "1994, Shadia B Drury, Alexandre Kojève http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&vid=ISBN0312120923&id=zQRKXLwDPc4C&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&sig=zR0NpFT9gF4Mo_VTIPTm1274piI To live as a thing, to live for another and as the other expects, is to live unauthentically or in bad faith. To be true to oneself, one must reduce others to thingness and resist being so reduced."

Example

More examples

"1994, Shadia B Drury, Alexandre Kojève http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&vid=ISBN0312120923&id=zQRKXLwDPc4C&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&sig=zR0NpFT9gF4Mo_VTIPTm1274piI To live as a thing, to live for another and as the other expects, is to live unauthentically or in bad faith. To be true to oneself, one must reduce others to thingness and resist being so reduced."

Etymology

From thing + -ness.

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