Meanings
deerness1
- uncountableThe state or quality of being a deer.
[…] that which makes each particular being the very kind of being which it is, e.g., the chair's chairness, the tree's treeness, the sky's skyness, the deer's deerness, or the human's humanness.
2008, Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, Volume 27, Issues 1-3, page 792 more examples
Thus, he praised the work of the cave painters and their “contemplative intuition” in portraying the animals in their surroundings, in particular their illumination of the essential being of these animals, their “'deerness,'” for example.
2001, Ross Labrie, Thomas Merton and the Inclusive Imagination, University of Missouri Press, →ISBN, page 36In spite of the general features discussed above, the Filippovka stags remain enigmatic. That they were conceived of as supernatural is shown by their exaggerated features and their gold- and silver-foil covering, as well as by the fact that they are only realistic enough to indicate their “deerness,” as noted by Farkas.
2006, The Golden Deer of Eurasia: Perspectives on the Steppe Nomads of the Ancient World, Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 55
Deerness2
Origin
Deerness · proper noun
- Proto-Celtic*dubros“water”
- EnglishDeerness
The County Durham river name is derived from Proto-Brythonic, from Proto-Celtic *dubros (“water”) + *nesta, an ancient river-naming word.
More words from Proto-Celtic
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
deerness. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/deerness
“deerness.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/deerness. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “deerness,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/deerness.
Source: deerness on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.