Definitions

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

  • noun The quality of being benighted.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

benighted +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • Mamamuk, a primitive of boundless benightedness, goes along and under guard, Subienkow goes into the forest to gather the ingredients for his great medicine — spruce needles, inner bark of a willow, strip of birch bark, moss-berries, frozen roots, whatever was at hand.

    “Day had broken cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray, . . . .” 2008

  • And for using up most of the benightedness for the enlightenment of the lower 48.

    Still More Signs That Stevens Is Going Down 2009

  • I mean, that's definitely what it is in AL's case - just look at the benightedness he constantly parades.

    It's the new Bloggingheads — with me and Eve Fairbanks. Ann Althouse 2009

  • The incomparable H. L. Mencken used to publish a volume called Americana, in which he gathered newspaper clippings from around the United States that tended to inadvertantly and hilariously send up boosterism, yokel-ness, Babbitry, and the general ignorance and benightedness of many of the people we let watch over us.

    Allan Jenkins' Desirable Roasted Coffee 2005

  • The incomparable H. L. Mencken used to publish a volume called Americana, in which he gathered newspaper clippings from around the United States that tended to inadvertantly and hilariously send up boosterism, yokel-ness, Babbitry, and the general ignorance and benightedness of many of the people we let watch over us.

    Allan Jenkins' Desirable Roasted Coffee 2005

  • On the other hand of course Mr. Newsome, who knows it so well, has, as a good friend, dear kind man that he is, done everything he can — to keep us from fatal benightedness — for my small shy creature.

    The Ambassadors 2003

  • She flushed pink to have him stare at her so, and in response to that he felt again the sudden collision of his love for her and his total benightedness as to what she truly was.

    Ship Of Magic Hobb, Robin 1998

  • Past anthropologists were highly impressed with the beauty and profusion of the cave drawings that first appear with the arrival of Cro-Magnon man; as much as any skeletal evidence, these drawings tended to reinforce the notion of a wonderful new sensibility replacing the quintessence of “brute benightedness.”

    Eaters Of The Dead Crichton, Michael, 1942- 1976

  • His occasional references to such a subject as English Nonconformity shows the depth of his benightedness; and his ignorance, the voluntary and superb ignorance of the aristocrat and the High Churchman, is the source of many of his blunders.

    The Contemporary Review, January 1883 Vol 43, No. 1 Various

  • Asiatic elements of the Calcutta panorama are mingled in the most picturesque proportions; for Cossitollah is the link that most directly joins the pitiful benightedness of the Black Town to the imposing splendors of Kumpnee Bahadoor, -- the short, but stubborn chain of responsibility, as it were, whereby the ball of helpless and infatuated stock-and-stone-worship is fastened to the leg of

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 03, January, 1858 Various

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