knowingness

The cost of the absolute knowingness, which is a fantasy, anyway, is so high.

THE HUSBANDS AND WIVES CLUB LAURIE ABRAHAM 2010

He has perhaps like the stage villain a little too much of that cheap knowingness, which is the theatrical badge of the complete man of the world, but which gentlemen in actual life do not ordinarily affect.

Robert Browning Dowden, Edward 1904

It wasn't that the current version of the show (which was roughly the latter days of the Will Ferrell-era cast) had suddenly become dependent on popular culture and thus required the viewer's "knowingness"; this had always been the case, going all the way back to the golden era of Aykroyd, Belushi, and Radner.

Art and Culture 2010

The press will not mention it, because the press in its "knowingness" is a large part of that despair.

Henry Bean: A Letter to Howard 2008

Suddenly, as if he had dropped from one of the wide spreading trees, a very fat boy, with a shining face and a general air of "knowingness," appeared before them.

Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter Lawrence L. Lynch

They pile up local colour till your brain reels, and they assume a sort of man-of-the-wide-world "knowingness" which is extremely unpleasant.

Suspended Judgments Essays on Books and Sensations John Cowper Powys 1917

There is, in this work of Alexander the younger, plenty of imitation, of convention, of that would-be knowingness which is the most amusing form of ignorance, etc., etc.

A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 To the Close of the 19th Century George Saintsbury 1889

He seems to have decided this drive has nothing to do with any sense of morality and everything to do with our need, as individuals, to attain power by maintaining a level of "knowingness" (defined in terms of information, by the bulkload, rather than knowledge).

GreenCine Daily 2009

Then he sits and Jensen Ackles delivers an amazing look of self-referential 'knowingness' that speaks volumes for what is really going through at that exact moment.

planet.journals.ie 2009

Mr. Riccardi—writing with the fervor of an advocate, the skill of a critic and the knowingness of a musician he is a pianist as well as a writer—gives us something vivid on every page of "What a Wonderful World."

The Art of Staying Hot Tom Nolan 2011