Cooperativeness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The trait of showing a readiness to join forces and assist others in various endeavors
2. The attribute of being inclined to collaborate and support others in teamwork situations
3. The quality of being ready and eager to engage collaboratively with others

Etymology: Cooperativeness is a plain stack of parts: "cooperative" plus the suffix "-ness", which turns an adjective into a noun naming a quality. The base word itself comes from "co-" meaning "together" joined to "operative", meaning "working" or "acting", so the whole thing describes a tendency to work together. The "co-" prefix traces back through Latin "con-" and "co-", which carried the same sense of "with" or "together", and the "operative" element comes from Latin "operari", "to work". The suffix has a longer ancestry than the rest of the word. "-ness" descends from Old English "-nes", which was used to form nouns of quality from adjectives, and it has been attached to native and borrowed adjectives alike for well over a thousand years. Its earliest forms, reaching back to Proto-Germanic, show it was already a productive way of making abstract nouns long before "cooperative" existed in English.

Synonyms: collaboration, teamwork, partnership

Antonyms: individualism, selfishness