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deadliness

deadliness

1 6.8
Power to cause death or very serious harm
  • noun
  • /ˈdɛdlinəs/
translation icon : letalidad
  • The new safety regulations aim to reduce the deadliness of workplace accidents by enforcing stricter protocols.

Examples

  • Many wildlife experts are concerned about the deadliness of invasive species, which can disrupt local ecosystems and threaten native wildlife.

  • Fear of the deadliness of accidents.

  • Neither is my main point about the deadliness of fashion that music and philosophy must never be thought of, in any respect, as means to other ends.

    Academic text (1995)
  • When you add spiritual abuse to this, its deadliness is multiplied.

    Blog text (32)
  • Sixty years in which the deadliness of the weapon... has risen in direct proportion to the advances in science and technology.

  • I'd imagine an extinction-level super plague would need to have some nearly perfect balance between its deadliness and communicability.

    Blog text (8)
  • It is likely that conflict-related sexual violence decreased along with the decline in the number and deadliness of armed conflicts.

    Blog text (32)
  • The deadliness lay in the radiation, charged particles, searing infrared, blinding light, and lethal X-rays.

    Fiction book (2001)
  • The deadliness of the virus surprised many scientists, highlighting its ability to spread rapidly and cause severe illness.

Synonyms

lethality
vsdeadliness
6 7.5

Ability to cause death

includes causing great harm as well as causing death

Antonyms

1 3.3

The state of not causing harm or danger

How Deadly

deadliness
1 6.8
danger
1.0
risk
1.9
safety
1.0

Surface Forms

deadliness singular
deadlinesses plural

Morphology

deadliness = deadly (transparent) = dead + ly + ness

Forming a noun by adding -ness to the clear adjective 'deadly' straightforwardly yields the meaning 'the quality of being deadly'.

Etymology

The word deadliness comes from the simple word dead (meaning 'not alive') plus the ending -ness (meaning 'state' or 'quality'). So deadliness means the 'quality of causing death', which is why we use it to talk about how able something is to kill or cause great harm, and you can see the same root in death and deadly.