Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state or quality of being big; largeness of proportions; size, whether large or small; bulk, absolute or relative.

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

  • noun The state or quality of being big; largeness; size; bulk.

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

  • noun The characteristic of being big.
  • noun obsolete size

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

  • noun the property of having a relatively great size

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

big +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • Mays has eyes that rival Heather Graham's in bigness and roundness and she can fill them with a sadness that would make her look like a puppy in the rain if she didn't also fill them with mischief.

    What work is. A review of Paul Blart: Mall Cop by way of a gigantic spoiler 2009

  • I DO wonder if we're seeing another variation of the Caldecott problem, wherein bigness, ambition and (some say) egotism win the prize, and that these themselves are culturally coded as male virtues.

    Ladies-in-Waiting Roger Sutton 2008

  • All the talk about the current problems coming from the gradual repeal of the Glass Steagal from 1980 to 2000 are generally barking up the wrong tree, the gradual allowance of interstate banking (where banks could take deposits and have branches in more than one state), which occurred concurrently, and led to bigger and bigger banks would seem to have mattered far more, if bigness is where the badness is coming from.

    Matthew Yglesias » The Paulson/Yglesias Small Bank Plan 2008

  • Second, that enforcement of those norms and customs could have been essential for group cohesion and harmony, especially as groups got bigger (bigness is important in battles against other groups).

    The Selfless Gene 2007

  • Second, that enforcement of those norms and customs could have been essential for group cohesion and harmony, especially as groups got bigger (bigness is important in battles against other groups).

    The Selfless Gene 2007

  • VCs can help you jumpstart, sure, but raising 100 or 400 million dollars to skip all the steps on the way to bigness is rare indeed.

    July 2004 2004

  • VCs can help you jumpstart, sure, but raising 100 or 400 million dollars to skip all the steps on the way to bigness is rare indeed.

    The Cliff 2004

  • I find that statement particularly significant in that it has a pejorative connotation: bigness is apparently assumed to require restraint.

    The New Society: New Title, Same Old Debate 1976

  • One aspect of the movement towards bigness is the development we have just noted, the growth of regional trading groups, at present mainly in Western Europe but being emulated in Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere.

    Expanding Trade—The Positive Approach to Economic Growth 1963

  • While mere bigness is not the criteria, the optimum sized industry really is the criteria of contribution to productivity.

    The Resultant of Forces 1963

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