whistness

English

Etymology 1

whist +‎ -ness

Noun

whistness (uncountable)

1. (obsolete) Silence.
   • 1657, Thomas Heywood, The General History of Women:

     Who dares cumber / This universall whistnesse; where none come, / But taciturnity, and silence dumbe?

Etymology 2

Noun

whistness (uncountable)

1. (Devon, obsolete) Witchcraft; supernatural dealings.
   • 1883, Edward William L. Davies, 'A memoir of the Rev. John Russell, and his out-of-door life (page 159)

     [O]thers fancied — the natives notably — that there was some "whistness," or witchcraft, in the business; it might be, as they thought, the work of Dick Down, the old huntsman who was eaten by the Hayne hounds, and whose ghost was known to haunt the covers round the park.

   • 1982, Ruth St. Leger-Gordon, The Witchcraft and Folklore of Dartmoor, page 26:

     Other more learned derivations have been suggested, but the whole place is steeped in “whistness” for on the open hillside above the oak copse runs the ancient Lych way, that ghostly Path of the Dead […]