Appallingness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The state of being exceptionally unpleasant or shocking often evokes intense feelings of disgust or outrage
2. A characteristic that signifies extreme moral or aesthetic failure can lead to profound disappointment and distress
3. The quality of being so bad that it instills a strong sense of horror or dismay typically associated with ethical or aesthetic shortcomings

Etymology: "Appallingness" is simply "appalling" with the suffix "-ness" attached, the common English way of turning an adjective into a noun for a quality. "Appalling" is itself the adjective from "appal," which traces back through Old French "apalir" (to grow pale) and ultimately to a Latin root meaning to make pale. The sense of dismay or horror came later, so the word began with a physical image of blanching before it described something shocking. Because "appalling" was originally used to describe things that made you go pale with fear or dismay, "appallingness" inherits that sense of shocking, horrifying quality, now intensified into plain extreme badness. The suffix "-ness" is attached freely to adjectives like this, so "appallingness" needed no separate coinage of its own and reads as a straightforward nominal form of its base word.

Synonyms: horribleness, atrociousness, terribleness, dreadfulness, shocking quality

Antonyms: pleasantness, delightfulness, agreeableness, enjoyableness, satisfactory quality