The Nesselrode to Ruin

Grammarwise, it is permissible to tailfin any word with the suffix meaning "in the manner of." Estheticswise, it is deplorable--businesswise, dollarwise, saleswise and weathering are all barbarisms that deserve to be barred. And now with a word to the wise comes an equally formidable enemy: ness, denoting "state, quality or condition." It is not the friendly suffix of greatness, goodness, loveliness (properly forming abstract nouns from adjectives) or even Loch Ness, but a whole new invasion of language spotted by Professor Dorothy N. Foote of California's San Jose State College.

In The CEA Critic, published by the College English Association, Teacher Foote reports that ness added to nouns, pronouns, verbs and phrases--a custom thought until now to be mostly whimsical, as in whyness or everydayness--has become popular among distinctly unjocose people. In Clock Without Hands, Novelist Carson McCullers repeatedly alludes to livingness--meaning, as Teacher Foote sees it, "the hum of hot blood, the buzz, the throb of passion," which is perhaps also "felt sappily by flowers and vegetables." Thingness, as used by Poet John Ciardi, "the sober Saul of modern letters," apparently connotes some ineffable quality of poetic words when uttered by a poet. When Novelist J. D. Salinger's Franny cries her eyes out in a ladies' room (Is she pregnant, hearing God, or what?), she observes the room's suchness--but at least Salinger can quote precedent, for the word is common in Buddhist philosophy as tathata, the equivalent of thusness.

On this suffix down, any number can play--and do. A recent novel speaks of drinkingness (more pleasurable than drunkenness). One Texas preacher is currently using everything from thereness and scatteredness to gatheredness--which suggests that he owes a debt to togetherness, used in the 1920s by Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead long before Madison Avenue took it over. Another early ness-builder was Mr. Justice Holmes, who defended his decisions by saying: "I do accept a rough equation between isness and oughtness." Teacher Foote has spotted the malpractice as far back as a rare 16th century book that describes Fingal's Cave in the Hebrides as having cavern-nesse. So perhaps, as George Eliot put it, "Men's men: gentle or simple, they're much of a muchness."

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