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Quiddity   Listen
noun
Quiddity  n.  (pl. quiddities)  
1.
The essence, nature, or distinctive peculiarity, of a thing; that which answers the question, Quid est? or, What is it? " The degree of nullity and quiddity." "The quiddity or characteristic difference of poetry as distinguished from prose."
2.
A trifling nicety; a cavil; a quibble. "We laugh at the quiddities of those writers now."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Quiddity" Quotes from Famous Books



... Herein he resembles THACKERAY, who used to delight in taking the reader behind the scenes, and exhibiting the wires. Not so JAMES PAYN. He comes in front, and comments upon the actions of his puppets, or upon men and morals in general, or he makes a quip, or utters a quirk, or proposes a quiddity, and pauses to laugh with you, before he resumes the story, and says, with the older romancers, "But to our tale." Most companionable writer is JAMES PAYN. Tells his story so clearly. A PAYN to be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... quality means to represent it or not. It can DO nothing to the quality beyond resembling it, simply because an abstract quality is a thing to which nothing can be done. Being without context or environment or principium individuationis, a quiddity with no haecceity, a platonic idea, even duplicate editions of such a quality (were they possible), would be indiscernible, and no sign could be given, no result altered, whether the feeling I meant to stand for this edition or for that, or whether ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... plausibly be so exhibited) he loses his virtue as an author. He thought of himself as a cause, a surprising intruder upon the routine of the world, an original creator. I think that he is right, and that the profitable study of a man is the study which regards him as an oddity, not a quiddity. ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... To stuff his conversation full of quibble and of quiddity, To dine on chops and roly-poly pudding with avidity— He'd better clear away ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... quiddity, 'Like ghosts of defunct bodies fly - Where Truth in person does appear Like words congealed in ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson


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