tenderness
(ˈtɛndənɪs)
[f. tender a. + -ness.]
The quality or state of being tender.
1. Physical softness or delicacy; fragility; inability to stand rough usage; weakness, frailty; † youthfulness (obs.); effeminacy, womanishness.
| 13.. Cursor M. 25337 (Cott.) Thoru tendernes of vr flexs. 1387 Trevisa Higden (Rolls) VI. 301 Þou doost riȝtfulliche..þat confortest þe tendernesse [= newness] of my professioun. c 1430 Lydg. Min. Poems (Percy Soc.) 220 How myght I the woo endure, In tendrenesse of wommanheede? 1596 Dalrymple tr. Leslie's Hist. Scot. (S.T.S.) I. 19 In tendirnes of thair flesh thay [sheep] are lyke the cattel. 1623–33 Fletcher & Shirley Night-Walker i. iii, Alas poor gentlewoman, Must she become a nurse now in her tenderness? 1708 J. C. Compl. Collier (1845) 35 According to the tenderness or hardness of the Coal. 1774 Pennant Tour Scotl. in 1772 258 Through the age and tenderness of the parchment, little could be read. 1856 Ruskin Mod. Paint. IV. v. xx. §4 [Such a person] can hardly be said to know what tenderness in colour means at all. |
b. quasi-concr. Tender substance.
| 1382 Wyclif Jer. li. 34 He fulfilde his wombe with my tendernesse. 14.. Metr. Voc. in Wr.-Wülcker 627/7 Thye, crus, hepe, femur, the tendurnesse of þe thye, famen. 1548 Thomas Ital. Dict. (1567), Lanugine, the tendernesse or downe of a yonge bearde. |
2. The quality of being tender in regard or treatment of others; gentleness, kindness, compassion, love; considerateness, mercy, leniency.
| a 1300 Cursor M. 9994 (Cott.) Takening..O tendernes and truth stedfast. c 1450 Merlin i. 2 Grete loue he hadde to man and gret tendirnesse. 1526 Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W. 1531) 58 b, So longe as suche tenderness is to the no distraccion from goostlynes. 1668 Owen Expos. Ps. cxxx. Wks. 1851 VI. 415 What love and tenderness there is in God to receive us. 1751 Johnson Rambler No. 179 ¶3 Deformity itself is regarded with tenderness rather than aversion. 1844 Ld. Brougham Brit. Const. xix. §5 (1862) 343 Who visited their offences with tenderness. |
b. with a and pl. An instance of this.
| 1660 F. Brooke tr. Le Blanc's Trav. 284 Then there was amongst us such a tyde of tendernesses. 1850 Lynch Theo. Trin. ix. 154 Hypocritical exhibitors of prettynesses and tendernesses. |
3. Sensitiveness to impression; impressionableness, soft-heartedness; sensibility to pain, esp. when touched; crankness (of a ship).
| c 1440 Partonope 2713 Som wept for tendyrnesse of hert. 1594 Carew Huarte's Exam. Wits vi. (1596) 78 Memory is nothing els but a tendernesse of the braine, disposed..to receiue & preserue that which the imaginatiue apprehendeth. 1709 Stanhope Paraphr. IV. 176 Till the Patient be awaken'd into Tenderness and Smart, there is no Hope of a Cure. a 1716 South Serm. (J.), True tenderness of conscience is nothing else but an awful and exact sense of the rule which should direct it. 1781 Gibson Decl. & F. xxix. III. 113 The disgrace of his daughter..wounded the tenderness, or, at least, the pride, of Rufinus. 1843 R. J. Graves Syst. Clin. Med. xviii. 210 Judging from the extreme epigastric and abdominal tenderness during life. 1854 Brewster More Worlds xvi. 231 Such a tenderness of retina, that he could, in a dark night, see and distinguish plainly colours of ribands. 1887 Daily Tel. 10 Sept. 2/5 She stood up well under her canvas. She showed no signs of tenderness. |