[f. as prec. + -NESS.] The quality of being expansive.
1. a. Tendency to expand. b. Wide-spreading character or nature.
1829. Bentham, Wks. (1843), XI. 18. What you say on this subject shows the expandedness and expansiveness of your mind.
a. 1853. Robertson, Serm., Ser. III. xiv. 172. The … affections of the Apostle Paul … tending to expansiveness rather than concentration.
1854. H. Miller, Sch. & Schm., xii. (1860), 122/2. The scenery … was imposing … from its bare and lonely expansiveness.
1857. Toulmin Smith, Parish, 11. While the … expansiveness of the Common Law will be thus shown.
1879. Geo. Eliot, Theo. Such, ix. That would restrict the expansiveness of trade.
1884. trans. Lotze’s Metaph., 96. The expansiveness of the gaseous elements.
2. Absence of reserve in feeling or speech; genial frankness, freedom, openness; unrestrained flow of sympathy or conversation.
1856. Emerson, Eng. Traits, Lit., Wks. (Bohn), II. 115. That expansiveness which is the essence of the poetic element.
1862. Mrs. Gordon, in ‘H. A. Page,’ De Quincey (1877), I. viii. 160. In the expansiveness of his own heart.
1864. Sat. Rev., 9 July, 45. Gifted female friends … can praise with a large, ungrudging expansiveness.
1867. Lewes, Hist. Philos., II. 520. In the expansiveness of private conversation.
1883. G. A. Boughton, in Harper’s Mag., Dec., 95/1. Who greeted Miles with … noisy familiarity and expansiveness.
