Centeredness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The quality of being focused on oneself or one's own interests rather than on other people or external matters
2. The state of having a central point of focus or balance in something
3. A condition characterized by maintaining a core or middle position for stability or orientation

Etymology: "Centeredness" is a plain English compound: "centered" with the suffix "-ness" attached. The suffix comes from Old English "-nes(s)", which turned adjectives into nouns of quality, so "good" gave "goodness" and "dark" gave "darkness." Its ancestry runs back through Proto-Germanic forms of the same suffix, and the older Proto-Indo-European material behind it is not what shapes the word's meaning in English. The adjective "centered" is the more recent part of the story. It is built from "center" plus the past-participle ending "-ed," and it was formed in English long after the suffix was already doing its work on other adjectives. Once "centered" was in regular use, "-ness" could attach to it in the usual way, producing a noun for the quality of being centered on something, here usually the self. Because the word is formed by regular rules, its meaning follows directly from its parts: a state of being centered, with the self-focused sense developing from the way "centered" is used. Nothing in its history is surprising, so the word's record is simply that of a common English formation.

Synonyms: focus, centrality, concentration, equilibrium, stability

Antonyms: dispersal, chaos, instability