thankfulness

plural thankfulnesses · alternative obsolete thankefulnesse

1. uncountableusuallyThe state of being thankful.

   All our Diſcontents about what we want, appeared to me, to ſpring from the want of Thankfulneſs for what we have.

   1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC, page 153

   2 more examples

   No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or[…]. And at last I began to realize in my harassed soul that all elusion was futile, and to take such holidays as I could get, when he was off with a girl, in a spirit of thankfulness.

   1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, page 46

   King's Messenger, 1918-1940: Memoirs of a Silver Greyhound. By George P. Antrobus, O.B.E., King's Foreign Service Messenger 1918-1940. London: Herbert Jenkins Ltd. Price 10s. 6d. net. [...] There is cause for thankfulness that he had just completed this book before he died, for it is a worthy memorial.

   1941 October, “Railway Literature”, in Railway Magazine, page 480

   Synonyms: appreciation, gratefulness, gratitude