Heterogeneousness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The attribute of possessing a mix of varied kinds or types The condition in which elements are markedly different from one another The quality of being composed of unlike and diverse entities
2. The state of containing a variety of different elements or types within a whole
3. The characteristic of having components that are not uniform but distinctly varied

Etymology: "Heterogeneousness" is a plain English formation: the adjective "heterogeneous" with the suffix "-ness" attached to turn a quality into a noun. The adjective itself comes from New Latin "heterogeneus", built from the Greek "heteros" meaning "other" or "different" and "genos" meaning "kind" or "origin". So the core idea is literally "of other kind," which is why the word describes mixtures whose parts differ in nature rather than merely in size or degree. The suffix "-ness" is Old English in origin, one of the oldest productive ways of making abstract nouns from adjectives, as in "kindness" or "darkness." Attaching it to a long Greek-derived adjective produces a term that names the state of being mixed in kind, so "heterogeneousness" is the quality of a whole in which the components are distinctly varied.

Antonyms: homogeneity