Chewiness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The quality of food that determines how easily it can be chewed while also considering its texture and consistency
2. The characteristic of a substance that influences how it is bitten and broken down by the teeth, affecting overall mouthfeel
3. A property that describes the resistance of a material to being crushed and its effect on the eating experience

Etymology: Chewiness is a plain formation: the adjective "chewy" with the suffix "-ness", which turns an adjective into a noun for a quality. Its base, "chew", goes back to Old English "ceowan" and ultimately to a Proto-Germanic root shared with several words for jaws and grinding. The "-y" in "chewy" is the Middle English adjective-forming ending that gave English many words for "full of" or "having the quality of" a base, so "chewy" describes food that needs sustained work from the teeth before it gives way. The suffix "-ness" has a long pedigree of its own. It comes from Old English "-nes" and before that from a Proto-Germanic noun-forming element, and it is one of the most productive ways English has of making abstract nouns from adjectives. Because "chewy" was already in use as a food-texture term, "chewiness" follows the same pattern as "sweetness" or "softness", naming the measurable property that the adjective describes.

Synonyms: toughness, fleshy

Antonyms: softness, tenderness