rumnessn.
/ˈrʌmnəs/, U.S. /ˈrəmnəs/ colloquial (now somewhat archaic).
Peculiarity, oddity, strangeness.
ΘΚΠ
the world > relative properties > order > disorder > irregularity > unconformity > abnormality > [noun] > oddness
oddness1611
queerity1711
particularity1712
whimsicalness1715
oddity1739
queerness1748
whimsicality1761
singularity1768
quizzity1788
eccentricity1794
quizziness1798
queerishness1803
fantasticness1825
rumness1840
weirdness1869
quirkiness1870
rumminess1872
whimsiness1909
1840 H. Cockton Valentine Vox xxv. 180 It's only the rumness of the thing, you see, that gets over me.
1865 C. Dickens Our Mutual Friend II. iii. iii. 22 The Fates ordered him into it again. Which is rumness; ain't it?
1892 R. L. Stevenson & L. Osbourne Wrecker xiv. 220 You see something of the rumness of this job, but not the whole.
1905 W. A. Raleigh Lett. (1926) II. 286 Christianity caught on by its very rumness; all the loose floating blobs of superstition ran to it.
1926 W. S. Maugham in Harper's Bazar Jan. 126/2 ‘It was a rum story.’ My host stopped..as though, remembering it now, he was struck again with its rumness.
1998 J. Lawton Little White Death xxv. 99 He did not want to be made to comment on the ‘rumness’ of it all. So he said nothing.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2011; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1840