dramaticness

English

Etymology

From dramatic +‎ -ness.

Noun

dramaticness (uncountable)

1. The quality of being dramatic.
   • 1898, Ferdinand Brunetière, translated by Ralph Derechef, Manual of the History of French Literature, London: T. Fisher Unwin, […], page 503:

     His novels in the second place are idealistic novels;—because the duties of ordinary life are suppressed in them;—because they owe their dramaticness in general to the conflict between “passion” and “honour” [Cf. Alfred de Vigny, Grandeur et Servitude militaires];—and because vanquished honour and passion find no other refuge in them than in death [Cf. the habitual dénouements of classic tragedy].

   • 1901 March 24, Daisy Fitzhugh Ayres, “Miss Kinkead as a Lecturer: Mrs. Daisy Fitzhugh Ayres Reviews a Winter Course of Delightful Literary Lectures”, in The Sunday Leader, Lexington, Ky., second section, page 1:

     The intensity, dramaticness and fire of her work, made the speaker seem almost as one translated.

   • 1903 October 25, Mary MacLane, “Mary MacLane Again Meets Her Kind Devil”, in Great Falls Daily Tribune, Great Falls, Mont., page 6:

     “Your majesty—my Devil,” I say, and am more or less thrilled with the dramaticness and the picturesqueness of it all.

   • 1908, Patrick Vaux, The World’s Awakening, London: Hodder and Stoughton, page 91:

     For soon were to sound out in all tragic dramaticness, now high now low, now in defeat and now jubilantly triumphant, the drums and tramplings of world-wide hostilities.

   • 1909, C. N. Williamson, A. M. Williamson, “Mrs. Senter to Her Sister, Mrs. Burden”, in Set in Silver, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, page 336:

     The country began to look theatrical, which was a pleasant change after Wells, and all my native dramaticness began to surge in me.

   • 1913, The Town Planning Review, page 301:

     The dramaticness of this growth has been thus intensified by the stagnation which naturally ensued upon the disasters with which the century began.

   • 1915 May 20, “Two Cantatas at the High School”, in The Hartford Courant, volume LXXIX, Hartford, Conn., page 6:

     All of the romance, pathos and dramaticness of the fascinating poetry of Longfellow in “Hiawatha” is brought out in the musical setting by the late Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in the two cantatas, “Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast” and the “Death of Minnehaha,” which will be given by the choir of the Hartford Public High School in Foot Guard Hall Friday evening at 8:15 o’clock.

   • 1916, George Howard Darwin, Scientific Papers, Cambridge: at the University Press, page xxx:

     My father would tell us the stories of the places we went to with an incomparable conviction, and sense of the reality and dramaticness of the events.

   • 1995, Lesley Stern, “Meditation on Violence”, in The Scorsese Connection, Bloomington, Ind., Indianapolis, Ind.: Indiana University Press; British Film Institute, →ISBN, page 17:

     There exists a primary level of the actor’s dramaticness which has nothing to do with intellectual categories but which relates uniquely to the way in which the actor manipulates his or her energy.

Synonyms

• dramaticity