[f. as prec. + -NESS.] The quality or condition of being submissive.
1611. Speed, Hist. Gt. Brit., IX. xix. 714. We seeke rather by violence to extort, then by submissiuenes to beg his pardon.
1679. Dryden, Troil. & Cress., Pref. b 2. With all the submissiveness he can practice, & all the calmness of a reasonable man.
1818. Hallam, Mid. Ages (1872), I. 125. The pope’s knowledge of the personal submissiveness to ecclesiastical power.
1863. Kinglake, Crimea (ed. 3), II. xii. 185. They approached him respectfully, but without submissiseness.
1890. F. W. Robinson, Very strange Fam., 74. In all submissiveness [he] owned how deplorably wrong he had been.
