sightfulness

English

Etymology

From sightful +‎ -ness.

Noun

sightfulness (uncountable)

1. The state of being sightful; perspicuity.
   • c. 1570s – 1580 (date written), [Philip Sidney], “[T]he Second Eglogues”, in [T]he Countess of Pembrookes Arcadia [The Old Arcadia], folio 74, recto, line 17:

     Let vs not wincke, thoughe voyde of pureſt ſightfullnes.

     For a transcription, see: Albert Feuillerat, editor (1926), “The Second Book”, in The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia: Being the Original Version […] (Cambridge English Classics; The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney; IV), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, →OCLC, page 143.

   • 2001, Peter Fritzsche, Specters of History: On Nostalgia, Exile, and Modernity‎^[1]:

     It makes sense, then, to reconsider nostalgia not as blindness but as sightfulness

References

“sightfulness”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.