Dictionary.com Word of the Day
Word of the Day for Thursday December 29, 2005
quiddity \KWID-ih-tee\, noun:
1. The essence, nature, or distinctive peculiarity of a thing.
2. A hairsplitting distinction; a trifling point; a quibble.
3. An eccentricity; an odd feature.
He wanted to capture not just live animals, but the
aliveness of animals in their natural state: their
wildness, their quiddity, the fox-ness of the fox and the
crow-ness of the crow
--Thomas Nye, quoted in "Ted Hughes, 68, a Symbolic Poet
And Sylvia Plath's Husband, Dies," [1]New York Times,
October 30, 1998
So far, I have tried to intimate, through meshed parallels
and contrasts, something of the nature, the quiddity, of
Japanese and of American literature.
--Ihab Hassan, "In the mirror of the sun: reflections on
Japanese and American literature, Basho to Cage," [2]World
Literature Today, March 1, 1995
Boswell set biography a new ambition: capturing the
copiousness and quiddity of a personality -- the self
peculiarly revealed in odd quirks and, especially, in
unpredictable, evanescent talk.
--John Mullan, "Dreaming up the Doctor," [3]The Guardian,
November 11, 2000
It is neither grammatical subtleties nor logical
quiddities, nor the witty contexture of choice words or
arguments and syllogisms, that will serve my turn.
--Michel de Montaigne, "Of Books"
She has looked after my interests with consummate skill,
dealt with my quiddities and constantly kept up my spirits.
--John Brewer, [4]The Pleasures of the Imagination
I began . . . to give some thought to the memoir I had
promised to write and wondered how I would go about it --
his freaks, quiddities, oddities, his eating, drinking,
shaving, dressing and playfully savaging his students.
--Saul Bellow, [5]Ravelstein
_________________________________________________________
Quiddity comes from the scholastic Medieval Latin term
quidditas, "essence," from quid, "what."
quiddity \KWID-ih-tee\, noun:
1. The essence, nature, or distinctive peculiarity of a thing.
2. A hairsplitting distinction; a trifling point; a quibble.
3. An eccentricity; an odd feature.
He wanted to capture not just live animals, but the
aliveness of animals in their natural state: their
wildness, their quiddity, the fox-ness of the fox and the
crow-ness of the crow
--Thomas Nye, quoted in "Ted Hughes, 68, a Symbolic Poet
And Sylvia Plath's Husband, Dies," [1]New York Times,
October 30, 1998
So far, I have tried to intimate, through meshed parallels
and contrasts, something of the nature, the quiddity, of
Japanese and of American literature.
--Ihab Hassan, "In the mirror of the sun: reflections on
Japanese and American literature, Basho to Cage," [2]World
Literature Today, March 1, 1995
Boswell set biography a new ambition: capturing the
copiousness and quiddity of a personality -- the self
peculiarly revealed in odd quirks and, especially, in
unpredictable, evanescent talk.
--John Mullan, "Dreaming up the Doctor," [3]The Guardian,
November 11, 2000
It is neither grammatical subtleties nor logical
quiddities, nor the witty contexture of choice words or
arguments and syllogisms, that will serve my turn.
--Michel de Montaigne, "Of Books"
She has looked after my interests with consummate skill,
dealt with my quiddities and constantly kept up my spirits.
--John Brewer, [4]The Pleasures of the Imagination
I began . . . to give some thought to the memoir I had
promised to write and wondered how I would go about it --
his freaks, quiddities, oddities, his eating, drinking,
shaving, dressing and playfully savaging his students.
--Saul Bellow, [5]Ravelstein
_________________________________________________________
Quiddity comes from the scholastic Medieval Latin term
quidditas, "essence," from quid, "what."