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partialness

partialness

7.7
A state of being incomplete or not whole
  • noun
  • /ˈpɑːrʃəl.nəs/
translation icon : parcialidad
  • The partialness of his knowledge meant he could only answer some of the questions correctly.
  • the partialness of the landscape

Examples

  • Pissarro's paintings, his coins, are works of art, landscapes that sustain themselves (not as tableaux, but as something else) in all their partialness, because the artist painted solidly and willed his pictures into being.

    Academic text (1998)
  • In Pissarro's pictures, then, partialness is appropriated, extracted from a discourse that promoted its derogation, and made a criterion.

    Academic text (1998)
  • In the end, this relation depends on the condition of partialness.

    Academic text (1998)
  • This partialness, in the end, is understood not to signify lack at all but a different and new sort of presence.

    Academic text (1998)
  • The least partialness is your own defect of sight and cheapens the experience fatally.

    Academic text (1992)
  • They abolish "partialness"; we are no longer bound to our origins, do not encounter other minds, have no past to burden us, or future to hope for or dread.

    Academic text (1992)
  • As we shall see, Pissarro made use of what was characterized at the time as the partialness of landscape, its insufficiency, and its inability to ever achieve the status of tableau in order to produce pictures that reexamined the relation between painting and beholder.

    Academic text (1998)
  • It will become clear that the artist thought of his pictures as discrete views, or coins (corners), of the world that exploited and made a criterion of what was described at the time as the inherent partialness of the genre of landscape painting.

    Academic text (1998)
  • Her report reflected the partialness of the data collected, as it did not represent the entire population.

  • We cannot rely on the partialness of this study, since it focuses on only one aspect of the problem.

Synonyms

incompleteness
vspartialness
3 5.9

A state where something has missing parts or information

focuses on being only a part rather than general lack
fragmentariness
vspartialness
9.1

A quality of being made of many separate pieces with parts missing

emphasizes being only one section instead of many broken parts

Antonyms

32 6.5

All the parts of something considered together

7 4.2

The state of having everything needed

How Complete

completeness
7 4.2
partialness
7.7

Surface Forms

partialness singular
partialnesses plural

Morphology

partialness = partial (transparent) = partial + ness

Formed by the adjective 'partial' + the noun-forming suffix '-ness', so the meaning is directly 'the state of being partial'.

Etymology

Partialness comes from the simple root part, meaning 'a piece' or 'not whole', plus a noun ending. So partialness is the state of being only a piece or incomplete, not the whole thing.