[1700–10; arch2 + -ness]This word is first recorded in the period 1700–10. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: camera, cozy, emphatic, hump, sliding scale-ness is a suffix attached to adjectives and participles, forming abstract nouns denotingquality and state. Other words that use the affix -ness include: fitness, forwardness, rockiness, unpleasantness, wellness
Examples of 'archness' in a sentence
archness
There was no subtext, no lacerating archness.
Times, Sunday Times (2016)
The characters are inspired creations, and the movie's archness coexists with a pleasing melancholy.
Times, Sunday Times (2013)
A jolly enough jape, if you can take the digressions and unrelenting archness.
Times, Sunday Times (2007)
The archness deflates the drama; it is both postmodernly witty and a touch shoddy.
The Times Literary Supplement (2010)
I suggested that, in this context, archness was pretty much the right sort of tone, but she wasn't mollified.
Times, Sunday Times (2017)
His interpretations seem all the more lumbering and verbose for being written in academic jargon overlain with insinuating archness.
The Times Literary Supplement (2012)
A similar blend selfsatisfaction colours the four lesser novels, now much dated, where gush and archness are not always avoided.
The Times Literary Supplement (2017)
The gap between then and now can't go unacknowledged, which makes for a certain archness.
The Times Literary Supplement (2018)
Rejecting the stylization of mainstream comics, the often rough or simple graphics on display belie their archness and sophistication.
The Times Literary Supplement (2017)
The archness of the gloss is typical of the obiter dicta with which the authors spruce their diligence.