hearsomeness

English

Etymology

From Middle English hersumnesse, from Old English hīersumnes (“obedience”), equivalent to hearsome +‎ -ness. Cognate with West Frisian hearsumens (“obedience”).

Noun

hearsomeness (uncountable)

1. (rare) Obedience; submission to authority.
   • 1939, James Joyce, Finnegans Wake:

     Thus the hearsomeness of the burger felicitates the whole of the polis.

   • 1993, John Bishop, Joyce's Book of the Dark:

     […] his awakened "hearsomeness" causing him to misconstrue the sound, along Aristotelean lines, as the sound of thunder.

   • 1996, Christine Froula, Modernism's body:

     The cultural "bonum" that arrives by her Grace, issuing from the "malo" (apple/evil) of this "foenix culprit," consists in her streaming urine/words, which the Jarl's felicitous "hearsomeness" — his passion to keep her within his hearing and heir-ing […]

Related terms

• hearsome