Blackness

How to spell blackness

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce blackness

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does blackness mean?

1. nounThe quality or state of being black, especially complete darkness or the deepest dark colour.

Blackness in a sentence

• The power cut left the whole house in total blackness.

• The blackness of the night sky made the stars stand out sharply.

Where does blackness come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built from the native English adjective black, which comes from the Old English blæc, meaning dark or the colour black. Curiously, blæc sat very close to another Old English word, blac, meaning pale or shining, and the two were sometimes confused in early manuscripts, since both ultimately trace back to a root tied to burning and the soot or bright flame that fire produces. The abstract noun was formed by adding the productive suffix -ness, which Old English used freely to turn an adjective into a name for the state or quality it describes, just as in goodness and darkness. So blackness simply means the quality or condition of being black, whether of colour or of an absence of light. The word has been in continuous use since the Old English period, and its spelling is straightforward because both parts, black and -ness, remain everyday English elements.

How the word is built

• black (Old English blæc: dark, the colour black)
• -ness (suffix forming nouns of state or quality)