Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as presence.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete The quality or state of being present; presence.

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

  • noun The characteristic of being present, of existing in a place.
  • noun The characteristic of being present, of the current time.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the quality of being the present

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

present +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • But here, the impact dissipates in the "wink-wink" cleverness of the mailbox / porno juxtaposition, and in the excess of little pictures, undercutting the "presentness" of the other images.

    unknown title 2009

  • One of a true Christian's treasures is the "presentness" of his salvation.

    The Thirsty Theologian 2009

  • But here, the impact dissipates in the "wink-wink" cleverness of the mailbox / porno juxtaposition, and in the excess of little pictures, undercutting the "presentness" of the other images.

    unknown title 2009

  • He was attracted by the idea that intrinsic motivation is located in the present moment, and reaches a peak when you are so absorbed in a task that time seems to slow down or even to stop altogther (akin to what the art critic Michael Fried calls ‘presentness’, as in “Presentness is grace”).

    F is for Flow « An A-Z of ELT 2010

  • They retain an eerie, anthropomorphic sense of presentness; faceless, eyeless, even, bodyless—Smith plays havoc with familiar proportions and divisions—they nonetheless seem to confront us and fix us with their invisible gaze.

    The Artist in All His Dimensions Karen Wilkin 2011

  • Jerry L. Thompson Smith's pieces, far from being dispassionate arrangements of geometric elements, retain an eerie sense of presentness, as if they have us fixed in their invisible gaze.

    The Artist in All His Dimensions Karen Wilkin 2011

  • He was attracted by the idea that intrinsic motivation is located in the present moment, and reaches a peak when you are so absorbed in a task that time seems to slow down or even to stop altogther (akin to what the art critic Michael Fried calls ‘presentness’, as in “Presentness is grace”).

    May « 2010 « An A-Z of ELT 2010

  • The possibility that this is so may explain why his pieces are generally short and appear to be in the thick of the argument from the first sentence — and convey, whether his subject is Raphael or Norman Rockwell, a sense of the moment, of sheer presentness.

    An Eye on the Tremors Schwartz, Sanford 2009

  • Reid grants that perceptions, memories and imaginings often differ in degree of force and vivacity, but, he argues, this difference is insufficient to account for the special quality of presentness represented in perceptions, the special quality of pastness represented in memories, and the special quality of atemporality represented in imaginings.

    Reid on Memory and Personal Identity Copenhaver, Rebecca 2009

  • The framing of the question of the presentness of scholarship in terms of place is more than rhetorical or metaphorical.

    Heart and Head at Kalamazoo, or, The Displacement of the Entirely Out of Place Nicola Masciandaro 2008

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