Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The property of being vivid, in any sense; vividity.

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

  • noun The quality or state of being vivid.

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

  • noun interest and variety and intensity
  • noun chromatic purity: freedom from dilution with white and hence vivid in hue

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

vivid +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • Her presence and vividness is what raises a two or three star rating to a four star rating.

    Reader reviews of Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski. 2007

  • If the pleasure arising from the gratification of these propensities were universally diminished in vividness, violations of property would become less frequent; but this advantage would be greatly overbalanced by the narrowing of the sources of enjoyment.

    Selection from _The Principle of Population_ 2002

  • His version was something of a pioneer effort, and if it sometimes lacked the dignity of the earlier translations it lacked nothing in vividness and colour.

    The East, The West and the Bible 1967

  • Likewise, the slapdash epistolary style of the MS., which had a certain vividness of its own.

    Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land 1915

  • New England "jerk" beat me in vividness and vigor of language.

    Some Adventures With the Police 1908

  • I came from the West, where men knew how to swear, and I wasn't going to let any mangy shack on a measly New England "jerk" put it over me in vividness and vigor of language.

    Bulls 1907

  • "A faint reddish light betrays itself through some of the windows of the minster; by degrees it increases in vividness; until at length the flame from which it proceeds bursts fiercely forth, illuminating the adjacent towers, and mingled volumes of smoke, and masses of brilliant sparks, now rapidly ascend to the skies; a great portion of the roof of the building falls in; and the dreadful conflagration is at its height when the scene closes" (Altick 167).

    Making Visible: The Diorama, the Double and the (Gothic) Subject 2005

  • a measly New England "jerk" put it over me in vividness and vigor of language.

    Bulls 1907

  • We would lose all sense of Donne’s art by losing touch with the historical reality he lived and breathed in and worked with, and which much of his language’s peculiar vividness is given over to revealing.

    The Biographical Fallacy 2009

  • Then, by the force of the original intention we had set -- which was to settle our mind in a state of vividness, which is not made artificial with any thought and which is not construed -- any new thought that arises automatically ceases.

    4 Meditation on the Conventional Nature of Mind 2009

Comments

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  • When Jake leaped, his trajectory made an arc that framed Grainer for me in weird vividness. he was still on his knees, propped up by the javelin, arms hanging inert, eyes half-closed, a thickened gobbet of dark blood hanging from his open mouth. The image had the remote clarity of a religious icon. From "The Last Werewolf" by Glen Duncan.

    March 30, 2012