Flakiness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The trait of being unreliable or inconsistent in behavior or performance ; the quality of easily breaking apart into flakes or thin layers
2. An attribute describing someone or something that frequently fails to meet expectations or commitments ; the characteristic of materials that separate into small, flat pieces when broken
3. A condition marked by frequent changes in reliability or dependability ; a physical property causing substances to break or peel off in thin segments

Etymology: Flakiness is a plain formation: the adjective "flaky" with the suffix "-ness" attached, turning a quality into a noun. The adjective itself goes back to "flake," which in English originally named a loosely hanging or thin piece of something, such as a flake of snow or a layer of pastry. From that physical sense, "flaky" came to describe things that split into thin sheets, and the suffix "-ness" lets English turn any such adjective into a noun for the quality it names. The suffix has a long ancestry. "-ness" descends from an Old English form "-nes," which was itself a noun-forming ending meaning roughly "state" or "condition," and it has been used to make abstract nouns from adjectives throughout the history of the language. In "flakiness," it attaches to a word that had already moved from the physical to the figurative, so the trait of crumbling into layers and the trait of being unreliable are both expressed by the same noun.

Synonyms: instability, irregularity, unreliability

Antonyms: stability, reliability