[f. FELL a. + -NESS.] The quality of being ‘fell’: see senses of the adj.
1. Fierceness, harshness, cruelty; † sternness, severity. Now (exc. in north, dial.) only poet. and rhetorical: Appalling cruelty, malignity, or destructive effect.
c. 1380. Wyclif, Serm., Sel. Wks. I. 55. Oþir servantis of God boþe in þis lyf and in þe toþir tellen to God þis felnes, and preien him of venjance.
1387. Trevisa, Higden (Rolls), VII. 151. [Gregory VI.] a man of religioun and felnes [Lat. severitatis].
a. 1400. Relig. Pieces fr. Thornton MS. (1867), 27. Þis worde Gaste sownnes sumwhate into fellenes.
c. 1440. Gesta Rom., xci. 417–8. (Add. MS.). This herde the lyon, and in a grete felnesse and angre he sente messyngers for the foxe.
1587. Misfortunes Arthur, IV. ii., in Hazl., Dodsley, IV. 323. No fear nor fellness fail’d on either side.
1678. R. L’Estrange, Seneca’s Mor. (1702), 297. The Lion Roars, and Swinges himself with his Tail; the Serpent Swells, and there is a Ghastly kind of Felness in the Aspect of a Mad Dog.
1719. Young, Busiris, I. i.
| Such was the Fellness of his boiling Rage, | |
| Methought the Night grew darker as he Frown’d. |
1814. Cary, Dante (Chandos ed.), 125.
| Look how that beast to felness hath relaps’d, | |
| From having lost correction of the spur. |
1865. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., VI. XV. xiii. 98. A fellness of humour against Friedrich.
b. Keenness, fierceness (of wind, etc.); angry painfulness. Obs. exc. dial.
c. 1374. Chaucer, Boeth., I. vi. 25. Þe felnesse of the wynde.
1642. Rogers, Naaman, 466. If that [the felon upon the hand] were out the felnesse would cease.
† 2. Shrewdness, wisdom. Obs.
1382. Wyclif, Job v. 13. That caccheth wise men in ther felnesse. Ibid. (1382), Prov. i. 4. That felnesse be ȝeue to litle childer.
