Resonablenesse

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The quality of being sensible, fair, and moderate in one's judgment or behavior, especially in matters of cost or demand
2. An archaic spelling of reasonableness, meaning the state of acting or thinking with good sense and fairness
3. The condition of being within sound judgment, neither excessive nor unfair, and open to what is rational

Etymology: Resonablenesse is a Middle English spelling of what is now "reasonableness," built from two parts that reached English by different routes. The first, "reasonable," was borrowed from Old French "raisonable," which came from Latin "rationabilis," meaning "endowed with reason." The second part, "-ness," is native English, descended from the Old English suffix "-nes," which turns an adjective into a noun for a quality, as in "darkness" or "kindness." Medieval spelling was unsettled, so this same term could be written with one s or two and with a final -e that scribes added or dropped. Its Latin base, "ratio," meaning reckoning or reason, is also the root of "rational" and "ratio," so the term links to that family through its French route.