Meanings
plural humannesses
- countableuncountableThe condition or quality of being human.
Too often, children become an "it" in their homes and their humanness is devalued.
1995, Neil Weiner, Sharon E. Robinson Kurpius, Shattered innocence, page 82 more examples
Though he had no hard data, his intuition was that increasing humanness in a robot was positive only up to a certain point.
2010 November 20, “Crossing the uncanny valley”, in The EconomistThese examples reveal that the shared personhood of hunters and prey was mutually comprehensible, such that hunters could see the animalness of themselves and the humanness of prey, and prey could see the humanness of themselves […]
2014, Christopher Watts, Relational Archaeologies: Humans, Animals, Things, page 101
Synonyms & antonyms
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
From human + -ness. Piecewise doublet of humaneness.
Full word history & related roots →Translations
German Menschlichkeit
- Menschlichkeitquality of being human
Greek ανθρωπινότητα
- ανθρωπινότητα (anthropinótita)quality of being human
Hungarian emberség
- emberségquality of being human
Italian umanità
- umanitàquality of being human
Latvian cilvēciskums
- cilvēciskumsquality of being human
Polish człowieczeństwo
- człowieczeństwoquality of being human
Cite this entry
humanness. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/humanness
“humanness.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/humanness. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “humanness,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/humanness.
Source: humanness on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.