Enjoyableness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The quality or state of providing pleasure and satisfaction
2. The characteristic of something that gives delight or amusement
3. A measure of how pleasant or entertaining an experience or thing is

Etymology: "Enjoyableness" is a plain compound built from two English parts: "enjoyable," meaning able to be enjoyed, and the suffix "-ness," which turns an adjective into a noun naming a quality. The pattern is one of the most productive in English, and "-ness" has been attached to native adjectives since Old English, so the result needs no foreign borrowing to explain it. The base word itself has the more interesting path. "Enjoy" came into English from Old French "enjoir," which descends from Latin "gaudere," to rejoice, and it originally carried the sense of giving joy to someone, rather than taking pleasure oneself. The old usage survives in phrases like "enjoy someone's company" and "may you enjoy your life," where the verb still points outward toward another person's delight. Because "enjoyable" and "enjoyment" are both older and far more common, "enjoyableness" is rarely needed. Its existence shows how readily English makes an abstract noun from any adjective when a writer wants to name a quality directly rather than describe something that is pleasant.

Synonyms: pleasurable, delightfulness, agreeableness, fun, satisfaction

Antonyms: unpleasantness, displeasure, dissatisfaction, boredom, misery