QUAINTNESS

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does quaintness mean? 

• QUAINTNESS (noun)
  The noun QUAINTNESS has 2 senses:

1. the quality of being quaint and old-fashioned

2. strangeness as a consequence of being old fashioned

  Familiarity information: QUAINTNESS used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• QUAINTNESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The quality of being quaint and old-fashioned

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Context example:

she liked the old cottage; its quaintness was appealing

Hypernyms ("quaintness" is a kind of...):

old-fashionedness (the property of being no longer fashionable)

Derivation:

quaint (attractively old-fashioned (but not necessarily authentic))

Sense 2

Meaning:

Strangeness as a consequence of being old fashioned

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Context example:

some words in her dialect had a charming quaintness

Hypernyms ("quaintness" is a kind of...):

strangeness; unfamiliarity (unusualness as a consequence of not being well known)

Derivation:

quaint (strange in an interesting or pleasing way)

 Context examples 

I liked the hush, the gloom, the quaintness of these retreats in the day; but I by no means coveted a night's repose on one of those wide and heavy beds: shut in, some of them, with doors of oak; shaded, others, with wrought old English hangings crusted with thick work, portraying effigies of strange flowers, and stranger birds, and strangest human beings,—all which would have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of moonlight.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)