[f. prec. + -NESS.] The quality of being amiable.
1. The quality of being lovable; lovableness, loveliness. = AMABILITY. a. of persons. Obs. or arch.
1534. Whitinton, Tullyes Offices, I. (1540), 58. There be two maner of beauties, of the which … we must applye amyablenesse to woman, dignyte to man.
1684. Baxter, Cath. Commun., 32. Men must be loved … every one according to the measure of his amiableness.
c. 1746. Hervey, Medit. & Cont. (1818), 192. His amiableness, who is ‘fairest among ten thousand, and altogether lovely.’
1837. J. Harris, Gt. Teacher, 74. The character of Christ is the conception of a being of infinite amiableness.
b. of things. Obs. or arch.
a. 1652. J. Smith, Sel. Disc., ix. 485. Let us inform our minds … in the excellency and loveliness of practical religion … beholding it in its own beauty and amiableness.
1753. Law, Lett. Import. Subj., 163. The amiableness of any virtue, or the horrid nature of any vice.
2. Kindliness of character which wins friendship; pleasing quality of heart and behavior. = AMIABILITY.
1711. Addison, Spect., No. 111, ¶ 1 (J.). As soon as natural gaiety and amiableness of the young man wears off, they have nothing left to recommend them.
1779. Johnson, L. P., Wks. 1816, X. 202. The amiableness of his manners made him loved wherever he was known.
1846. Blackw. Mag., LX. 482. My national frigidity was doomed to be thawed into civility, if not into amiableness.
1849. Miss Porter, Scot. Chiefs, 133. If you knew all her goodness, all the amiableness that dwells in her gentle heart.
