knowingness

American  

[noh-ing-nis] / ˈnoʊ ɪŋ nɪs /

noun

1. the quality of being aware, intelligent, well-informed, or intentional; knowing quality.

2. the quality of being shrewd, sharp, or astute, or of trying to seem so in a self-conscious way.

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Example Sentences

It’s campy, it’s cheesy, it’s way more fun than you expect it to be, but there’s a knowingness to the whole endeavor.

From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 14, 2025

Here, Freiman scratches at the difference between knowing and knowingness, and how our blind spots can subsume our personality.

From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 14, 2023

But my favorite member of the entourage is Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who brings a knowingness and a killer sense of comic timing to the role of Destiny, one of Jocelyn’s managers.

From New York Times • Jun. 30, 2023

This knowingness is very maternal, and is cast over all of these characters like a blanket, or like signal fires themselves.

From Seattle Times • Nov. 8, 2022

Death would be a complete knowingness, but what frightened him was this: not knowing beforehand what it was he would know.

From "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie