Adhesiveness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The property of tending to stick firmly to a surface or object
2. The characteristic that causes materials to cling together or bond tightly
3. The ability of a substance to adhere or attach itself to another surface

Etymology: Adhesiveness is a plain English formation: the adjective "adhesive" with the suffix "-ness", which turns a quality word into a noun for that quality. The adjective itself goes back to Latin "adhaerere", meaning "to stick to", built from "ad-" ("to") and "haerere" ("to cling"). Medieval Latin produced "adhaesivus" from that stem, and French took it as "adhésif", which English then borrowed as "adhesive". The suffix has a longer history than the adjective. "-ness" descends from an Old English ending "-nes" that was used to form abstract nouns from adjectives, so words like "goodness" and "darkness" are built the same way. Joining it to "adhesive" was therefore an ordinary step in English word-making rather than a special coinage, and the resulting noun simply names the state of being sticky in that technical sense.

Synonyms: stickiness, glue, tackiness, cohesion, bonding

Antonyms: nonstick, slipperiness, detachment, disengagement, release