informity

English

Etymology

From Latin informitas. See inform (adjective).

Noun

informity (countable and uncountable, plural informities)

1. (obsolete) Absence of regular form; shapelessness.
   • 1650, Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or, Enquiries Into Very Many Received Tenents:

     There may I confesse from this narrow time of gestation ensue a minority or smalnesse in the exclusion, but this however inferreth no informity, and it still receiveth the name of a naturall and legitimate birth; whereas if we affirme a totall informity, it cannot admit so forward a terme as an Abortment; for that supposeth conformation; and so we must call this constant and intended act of nature, a slip or effluxion, that is an exclusion before conformation; before the birth can bear the name of the parent, or be so much as properly called an Embryon.

   • 1862, James Gurnhill, The Breeches Bible: Considered as the Basis for Remarks:

     And again, on the other hand, it does not appear, that this informity ought to mislead the discriminating enquirer, for as soon as he has become conscious of it his greatest danger is over, and a knowledge of the parent tongues, the Anglo Saxon and French, ought to afford a sufficient safeguard, and enable him to discern at once, whether a particular form of spelling ought to be attributed to corrupt usage, or a closer approximation to one of the superior tongues.

   • 1875, “Substantial Generations”, in Catholic World, volume 21, page 101:

     This great doctor admits that unformed matter was created, and existed for a time in its informity.

   • 1961, James A. Weisheipl, The Dignity of Science: Studies in the Philosophy of Science, page 109:

     He argues that when Moses said that the earth was without form and void, and when he used other similar expressions, he was referring to the "informity," or rather the "uniformity," of the four elements.

2. The quality or state of being informed.
   • 1912 January, Thurber, “The Hillegas Scale”, in The English Leaflet, number 104, page 6:

     Indeed, it would have been hard to collect material with more possibilities for differing estimates among teachers who for many years had corrected compositions from a much narrower field and therefore of much greater informity both in technical accuracy and in general character.

   • 1965, The Journal of Pastoral Care - Volumes 19-20, page 152:

     There was little consensus about the degree of informity on religious beliefs, and again pastors rated the patient lower.

   • 1997, Jennifer Hedlund, The Influence of Sex Composition and Task Sex-linkage on Decision Making in Hierarchical Teams, page 99:

     An individual sex difference may explain the dominance effect on team informity, but members could not attain high informity by acting independently.

   • 2011, Erkki J. Brändas, “Time Asymmetry and the Evolution of Physical Laws”, in Philip E. Hoggan, Erkki J. Brändas, Jean Maruani, editor, Advances in the Theory of Quantum Systems in Chemistry and Physics, page 16:

     It is also important to realize that the completion of a dense subset of Hilbert space with respect to the appropriate norm gives different limits depending on whether it is carried out before or after the conversion, hence we will speak of an informity rule, i.e. a certain natural loss of information, which is compatible with broken temporal symmetry.

   • 2018, James Szalma, Peter A Hancock, Performance Under Stress, page 184:

     Decision informity aggregates to the team level and becomes team informity. At the team level, informity describes how informed the team is across all decisions.