quiddity

American  

[kwid-i-tee] / ˈkwɪd ɪ ti /

noun

• quiddities
  plural

1. Also called whatness.  the quality that makes a thing what it is; the essential nature of a thing.

2. a trifling nicety of subtle distinction, as in argument.

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quiddity British  

/ ˈkwɪdɪtɪ /

noun

1. philosophy the essential nature of something Compare haecceity

2. a petty or trifling distinction; quibble

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• quiddities
  plural

Etymology

Origin of quiddity

First recorded in 1350–1400; from Medieval Latin quidditās, equivalent to Latin quid “what” + -itās noun suffix; see -ity

Explanation

When a politician avoids answering a question while pretending to answer it, she often does it using quiddity, or by bringing up irrelevant and distracting points. Quiddity is a usefully sneaky tool if you want to evade an argument or question, and it's often used by people like lawyers in court and teenagers angling for later curfews. The noun quiddity has a philosophical meaning too, "the essential nature of something," or the unique thing that makes it what it is. The Medieval Latin root, quidditas, translates literally as "whatness."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

quiddity quiddities

Ample quotations from Hardwick allow her restless quiddity to come through.

From New York Times ● Nov. 3, 2021

He used his repertoire of gestures honed from years of doing caricatures not to generalise about a face, to fix it for all time, but to capture its quiddity.

From The Guardian ● Sep. 30, 2016

Sapped of quiddity, she has become “an all-American girl.”

From New York Times ● Jun. 23, 2016

Beautifying asphalt would seem to be no cinch, but the naked quiddity of the stuff, after a third or fourth look, turns cherishable.

From The New Yorker ● Mar. 21, 2016

But in the absolute consideration of the quiddity of a thing, and of those things which are known thereby, the intellect is never deceived.

From Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) From the Complete American Edition by Saint Thomas Aquinas

Managers, doormen and valets, with their quiddities and quirks, help set the tone for the singular ecosystem that is any given apartment building, as Mr. Soffer, the banker, explained.

From New York Times ● Mar. 23, 2020

Whatever is going on, whatever misalliances and misdelving of quiddities we get into, the human heart is still beating in the same way in everybody’s chest.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 2, 2016

Once her eye adjusted to the determined quiddities of her adopted hometown, she said, “Even weird cinder-block strange things from the 1950s started to look fabulous.”

From New York Times ● Jun. 12, 2015

A Further Range, Poet Frost's latest collection, contains some 50 pieces, from two-line quiddities to an eleven-page discourse.

From Time Magazine Archive

Philadelphia lawyers carry green bags full of briefs, remarkable for everything but brevity; also statutes, recognizances, tenures, double-vouchers, fines, recoveries, indentures, not to mention quiddities, quillets, quirks and quips.

From Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 06 Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists by Elbert Hubbard

Related Words

• aspect
• basis
• bottom line
• character
• core
• crux
• element
• lifeblood
• meaning
• nature
• principle
• quality
• reality
• root
• soul
• spirit
• structure
• substance