wishfulness

plural wishfulnesses

1. uncountableusuallyThe state or quality of being wishful.

   [The film American Madness] simply hit too close to home for audiences in 1932: the wishfulness of its happy ending could not compensate for the familiarity of its painful subject.

   2004, Mark Feeney, chapter 7, in Nixon at the Movies, University of Chicago Press, page 209

   1 more example

   She asked her little question with something of the softness of her old manner, with something of the longing loving wishfulness which used to make so many of her questions sweet to her mother’s ears.

   1863, Anthony Trollope, chapter 8, in Rachel Ray, volume 2, London: Chapman & Hall, page 170

2. uncountableusuallyWishful thinking.

   For the long lost glories, that never in fact existed save in the wishfulness of their brains, were being remembered with a reality as vivid, if not more so, as truth itself.

   1950, Mervyn Peake, chapter 36, in Gormenghast, Penguin, published 1969, page 228

   1 more example

   […] Gov. Eliot Spitzer has made New York the latest state to travel down a murky legal road, to a place where laws are made not in response to facts, but to wishfulness and fear.

   2007 March 13, “Wrong Turn on Sex Offenders”, in New York Times