[f. FAR + -NESS.]
1. The state or fact of being for; remoteness. Also occas. of sight: Far-reachingness. Now rare.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., III. xxi. (1495), 69. The syȝte demyth a grete sterre but smalle … for fernesse of place.
1580. North, Plutarch (1676), 650. Fearing the farness of the journey.
1605. Verstegan, Dec. Intell., ii. (1628), 29. Here is no neerenesse of affinitie at all, but as much farnesse as needeth to be.
1621. Lady M. Wroth, Urania, 29. They were brouth by my poor abiding, which by reason of the farrnesse from the Court, and foulnes of the weather, (a sudden storm then falling) they accepted for their lodging.
1876. Bancroft, Hist. U. S., V. lx. 208. Combining, more than any other, farness of sight and fixedness of belief with courage and power of utterance, he [John Adams] was looked up to as the ablest debater in congress.
1883. S. A. Brooke, in Homilet. Monthly, Dec. 152. In their farness from the strife and trouble of men.
† b. Amount of distance. Obs.
1523. St. Papers Hen. VIII., IV. 1. Every bataile an arrowe shotte from the other, and all like fernes from the Englisshe armye.
1674. N. Fairfax, A Treatise of the Bulk and Selvedge of the World, 78. Having nearnesses or farnesses betwen each other within the great verge.
2. concr. Distant parts. (From, in) the farness: ‘the distance.’ arch.
1571. Golding, Calvin on Ps. lxv. 6. Thou that art the hope … of the farnesse of the sea.
a. 1849. J. C. Mangan, trans. Freiligrath, The Spectre-Caravan, Poems (1859), 263.
| In the farness lay the moonlight on the Mountains of the Nile, | |
| And the camel bones that strewed the sands for many an arid mile. |
1855. Fraser’s Mag., LI., Jan., 94.
| It was on a sunny morning, by the linden from the farness, | |
| To the castle, on a war-horse, rode a knight in flashing harness. |
