Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Attenuation; fineness; thinness.
- noun Barrenness; emptiness; deficiency of interest, importance, or knowledge; want of substantial or attractive qualities: as, jejuneness of style in a book.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The state or condition of being
jejune .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the quality of being vapid and unsophisticated
- noun lacking and evidencing lack of experience of life
- noun quality of lacking nutritive value
Etymologies
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Examples
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Beyond extravagant language, beyond absurd fine things, it lies in a certain lack of reality and sobriety of sense and view, -- in a certain indefinable jejuneness in the mental fare provided, which makes mature men feel that somehow it does not satisfy their cravings.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 46, August, 1861 Various
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If a reader new to the classics opened Thucydides, his first impression would probably be one of jejuneness, of baldness.
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The kind of fire that led to elopements, to wild and clandestine love-making, could now, with too few exceptions, be found only among ne'er-do-wells, foreign adventurers, cut-throats or knaves; while the stability that promised security for the future and for the family, seemed generally to present itself with a sort of tiresome starchiness of body and jejuneness of mind, that thought it childish to abandon itself to any emotion.
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It was as if she felt their perfunctory nature, their conspicuous jejuneness, and nevertheless, like him, was utterly unable to broach the discussion of more serious things.
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It was the epoch of the _Melizah_, and the _Melizah_ was to supplement the jejuneness of Rabbinism and oppose the Hasidim with good results.
The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) Nahum Slouschz 1919
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It is not easy to avoid jejuneness in rendering faithfully the austere simplicity of this little poem, wherein the terms and metaphors are not rich in import to us as they would be to an early Buddhist.
Psalms of the Sisters Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys 1909
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They are guarded by the sacred rules of prescription, found in that full treasury of jurisprudence from which the jejuneness and penury of our municipal law has, by degrees, been enriched and strengthened.
Paras. 40-59 1909
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Through these influences my writing lost the jejuneness of my early compositions; the bones and cartilages began to clothe themselves with flesh, and the style became, at times, lively and almost light.
Chapter IV. Youthful Propagandism. The Westminster Review 1909
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He was far more of a scientific musician than Gluck, and his scores have nothing of his master's jejuneness.
The Opera A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions of all Works in the Modern Repertory. J. A. [Commentator] Fuller-Maitland 1892
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The jejuneness and woodenness from which the modern religious story too often suffers are in no way chargeable upon all, or even many, of them.
The English Novel George Saintsbury 1889
Gammerstang commented on the word jejuneness
(noun) - (1) Poverty, barrenness, particularly want of interesting matter; a deficiency of matter that can engage the attention and gratify the mind, as the jejuneness of style or narrative. Jejunity is not used. --Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828 (2) Jejunitie, barrennesse or slendernesse of stile. --Henry Cockeram's Interpreter of Hard English Words, 1623
April 23, 2018