[f. next + -NESS.]
1. The quality of being visionary in respect of mind or views.
1809–10. Coleridge, Friend (ed. 3), III. 72. Visionariness seems the tendency of the German;… fanaticism of the French.
1831. Blackw. Mag., XXX. 104. The conceptive faculty delights at times in half-formed and hazy visionariness.
1840. De Quincey, Style, Wks. 1859, XI. 256. Books … labouring with the same two opposite defects … dulness from absolute monotony, and visionariness from the aërial texture of the speculations.
1880. Pater, Coleridge, Wks. 1901, V. 83. A kind of languid visionariness, deep-seated in the very constitution of the ‘narcotist.’
2. The quality of being visionary in respect of reality, fulfilment, or practical value.
1817. Bentham, Parl. Reform., Introd. 317. Annuality—with all its wildness and visionariness … would be far less intolerable.
1837. Blackw. Mag., XLII. 98. He … wrote instantly,… against the new alarmist, pledging his own head upon the visionariness of his alarms.
1876. Mozley, Univ. Serm., i. 16. This project of a Universal Empire … may … justly be charged with utter visionariness.
