Meanings
plural propernesses
- uncountableusuallyThe state or condition of being proper; propriety.
The kind of women who put papers on shelves and had little towels like that instinctively distrusted and disliked Mack and the boys. Such women knew that they were the worst threats to a home, for they offered ease and thought and companionship as opposed to neatness, order, and properness.
1945, John Steinbeck, Cannery Row - uncountableusuallymathematicsThe state or condition of being proper (of a proper fraction, proper subset, etc.).
- obsoleteuncountableusuallyExcellence, quality.
Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits […] betook himself to his beads, and by those means got more honour than ever he should have done with the use of his limbs and properness of person […]
1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition 2, section 3, member 2
Synonyms & antonyms
nouncorrect or appropriate behavior
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
- Proto-Indo-European*per-der.?
- Proto-Indo-European*pér
- Proto-Indo-European*pró
- Proto-Indo-European*pro-
- Proto-Italic*pro-
- Proto-Indo-European*preyH-
- Proto-Indo-European*priHós
- Proto-Italic*prijos
- Proto-Italic*proprijos
- Latinpropriu
- Anglo-Normanpropre
- Middle Englishpropre
- Englishproper
- Englishproperness
Cite this entry
properness. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/properness
“properness.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/properness. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “properness,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/properness.
Source: properness on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.