youngness

English

Etymology

From young +‎ -ness.

Noun

youngness (usually uncountable, plural youngnesses)

  1. The state or qualities of being young or youthful; youth.
    • 1852, Herman Melville, Pierre; or The Ambiguities:
      […] he was conscious of a feeling which independently pronounced him her senior in point of Time, and Isabel a child of everlasting youngness.
    • 1944, Emily Carr, “Puppy Room”, in The House of All Sorts‎[1]:
      The puppy room in the basement brimmed with youngness, with suckings, cuddlings, lickings, squirmings—puppies whose eyes were sealed against seeing, puppies whose ears were sealed against hearing for the first ten days of life […]
    • 1988, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 2, in The Swimming-Pool Library, paperback edition, London: Penguin Books, →ISBN:
      I was eight years older than Arthur, and our affair had started as a crazy fling with all the beauty for me of his youngness and blackness.
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