Commonnesses

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The quality or state of being usual and widely encountered
2. The characteristic of occurring frequently within a population or area
3. The degree to which something is prevalent or typically found in a given environment

Etymology: "Commonnesses" is the plural of "commonness", which is formed from the adjective "common" plus the suffix "-ness", the Old English suffix that turns adjectives into nouns of state or quality. The base word traces back through Anglo-Norman "comun" and Latin "communis" to the Proto-Italic "kommoinis", which combined "kom-" (together) with a root meaning something shared or exchanged, so the original sense was roughly "held in common by many." The noun "commonness" is a straightforward English compound, and the plural "commonnesses" is the form of that noun, used when speaking of several distinct instances or kinds of the quality. Because "common" in English already carries both the sense of "shared by many" and "ordinary, frequently found," the noun naturally picked up the meaning of frequency of occurrence across a population or area.

Synonyms: ordinariness, usualness, normality, familiarity

Antonyms: rarity, uncommonness, uniqueness, exceptionalness