not-thereness

noun

The quality of not being there; absence.

Opposite
thereness
Ask AI about this wordChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

Meanings

nounnot-thereness (uncountable)
  1. uncountableThe quality of not being there; absence.

    The comatose feel of Max, the pendulous not-thereness as he leaned onto me, now returned. "How did I screw up so bad?" I said.

    2002, Michael Lowenthal, Avoidance
    2 more examples

    ...the palpable thereness of Woolf's characters is generated by her dramatization of their own sense of their evanescence, their imminent not-thereness.

    1983, Baruch Hochman, The test of character: from the Victorian novel to the modern

    In Bowen's work, thereness is uncomfortably close to not-thereness, being to non-being, presence to 'no-presence' (Friends, pp. 33, 91).

    2001, Rod Mengham, N. H. Reeve, The fiction of the 1940s: stories of survival

Synonyms & antonyms

Opposite
thereness

Origin

From not there + -ness.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

not-thereness. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/not-thereness

MLA

“not-thereness.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/not-thereness. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “not-thereness,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/not-thereness.

Source: not-thereness on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.