circumstantialness

English

Etymology

From circumstantial +‎ -ness.

Noun

circumstantialness (uncountable)

1. The state or fact of being circumstantial; a reliance on incidental or inconclusive details.
   • 1889 December 13, Lionel R. Webster, State of Oregon vs Kaiser (Statement of Facts):

     In fact, then, the evidence would be laid bare to the people of Southern Oregon, and they would know just why one man can be convicted of murder in the first degree, and "hung by the neck until he is dead," on strong circumstantial evidence; and why another crime, of the same foul magnitude, is committed, and the courts fail to find the author when the circumstantial evidence that made the first man stretch hemp was far less convicting in its circumstantialness than was the case that the blind Goddess of Justice could not find guilty; […]

2. Circumstantiality; an excessive or fastidious attention to minor details.
   • 1762 August 12, Edward Gibbon, Extracts From The Journal:

     I reviewed the remaining ſix hundred lines of the twenty-third book of the Iliad. It is a fine picture of the manners of the heroic ages: the games celebrated at the funeral of Patroclus contain a great variety of both their civil and religious customs, related with a clearneſs and a circumstantialneſs very diſagreeable to the taſte of a true commentator.

References

• “circumstantialness, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.