Meanings
- uncountableThe quality of being an elm tree.
The rational detective, of course, is not prepared to bow before oakness and elmness.
2004, François Gallix, Vanessa Guignery, Crime Fictions: Subverted Codes and New Structures, page 23 more examples
We seem to have become similarly obsessed, abandoning particular, familiar trees in favour of a kind of abstract notion of elmness.
1979, December 13, New Scientist, Vol. 84, No. 1185, page 895They were spectral, with all vestige of elmness leached back to the soil by the winter rains: twigs and bark gone from each one, leaving only a pale and spiky skeleton.
1983, Tom Vernon, Fat Man on a Roman Road: A Bicycle Exploration of Britain, page 129This is because, when we infer the absence of smoke from the non-apprehension of fire or the absence of elmness from the non-apprehension of tree, we not only prove the negative activities concerning them, but also the absence itself.
2007, Madhumita Chattopadhyay, Walking Along The Paths Of Buddhist Epistemology, page 171
Origin
Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
elmness. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/elmness
“elmness.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/elmness. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “elmness,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/elmness.
Source: elmness on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.