Whitenesses

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The quality or state of being white; the degree of purity, brightness, or lack of color present; a measure of how reflective or light in tone something appears
2. The condition of having a white color, often associated with cleanliness or clarity; an attribute that describes brightness or lack of hue; the extent to which something can be perceived as white in appearance
3. A characteristic denoting the absence of color or the presence of light colors; a description of what it means for something to exhibit a high level of whiteness; the abstract quality representing lightness or purity in color

Etymology: "Whitenesses" is simply the plural of "whiteness," so its story is really the story of "whiteness." That noun was formed in Old English as "hwītnes," built from "hwīt" (white) and the suffix "-nes," a common English device for turning an adjective into a noun of quality, as in "goodness" or "darkness." Over the Middle English period the word shed its initial "h" sound in most spellings, yielding the form we use today. The plural is less common because "whiteness" names an abstract quality, which is usually uncountable. Writers pluralise it when they want to speak of distinct kinds or degrees of white, such as the different whitenesses of snow, paper, or marble, treating each shade as its own quality.