Objectiveness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The characteristic of maintaining neutrality in evaluation without letting emotions cloud judgment
2. The state of judging or considering matters fairly without personal feelings affecting the outcome
3. An approach that emphasizes unbiased evaluation or observation without influence from one's emotions or opinions

Etymology: "Objectiveness" is a straightforward compound: the adjective "objective" with the suffix "-ness" attached. The suffix comes from Old English "-nes(s)", which turns an adjective into a noun naming the quality it describes, so "kindness" is the quality of being kind and "objectiveness" names the quality of being objective. The base word "objective" has a longer and more winding past. It descends from the Latin "obiectivus", formed from "obicere", meaning "to throw before" or "to present to the mind", which in medieval Latin philosophy came to mean "existing as an object of thought." English took the adjective in the sense of something existing in the external world, as opposed to only in the mind, and only later did it acquire the sense of being free from personal bias that the noun here describes. The suffix itself has deep Germanic roots, but in English it simply means "the state or quality of," so the word is best understood as a transparent formation built from a well-travelled adjective.

Synonyms: objectivity, impartiality, fairness

Antonyms: subjectivity, bias