Meanings
- uncountableThe state or condition of being antisphexish.
Do you have to yank out your own antisphexishness routines in order not to be bored by eternal life? (I.e., modify yourself so that you have "fun" in spending a thousand years carving table legs, a la "Permutation City".)
2002 January 25, Eliezer Yudkowsky, “Singularity Fun Theory (was: Ethical basics)”, in SL4 mailing list, message-ID <3C520756.75D27ADC@pobox.com>1 more example
I propose to call the quality here portrayed sphexishness, and its opposite antisphexishness (a vexish word to pronounce!), and then I propose that consciousness is simply the possession of antisphexishness to the highest possible degree. The point is that sphexishness and antisphexishness are two extremes along a continuum.
1985, Douglas Hofstadter, “On the Seeming Paradox of Mechanizing Creativity”, in Metamagical Themas, New York: Basic Books, →ISBN, page 529
Origin
From antisphexish + -ness, coined by Douglas Hofstadter.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
antisphexishness. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/antisphexishness
“antisphexishness.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/antisphexishness. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “antisphexishness,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/antisphexishness.
Source: antisphexishness on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.