deediness

From deedy +‎ -ness.

deediness (uncountable)

1. Full of purposeful activity; industriousness.
   • 1870, Science-gossip - Volume 5, page 175:

     These men, to the number of eighteen or twenty, were not only entirely ignorant of the word "geology," but testified their rustic wonderment that I should spend my time in looking on so eagerly as they drove their wedges into the stony layers, and should watch with such “deediness," as they called it, each fracture they made in the ponderous masses around them.

   • 1949, Paul J. Phelan, A Time to Laugh: A Risible Reader by Catholic Writers, page 41:

     Officer Captain Paul Waggett was preoccupied with the little problems of organization and equipment and correspondence that during the Second World War kept company commanders of the Home Guard in a condition of patriotic deediness […]

   • 1951, Compton Mackenzie, Eastern Epic - Volume 1, page 377:

     On January 20th, the Chiefs of Staff in London, with the grim and desperate deediness of a man who has suddenly woken up after oversleeping himself, brought to the notice of Malaya Command points of importance that would require attention if the troops on the mainland should be forced to withdraw to the island.

   • 1975, Cicely B. Hale, A Good Long Time: The Autobiography of an Nonagenarian, page 98:

     Tiresome, noisy and unruly they could most certainly be but delightful in their “deediness” and enthusiasm.

   • 2011, John of Ford, The Life of Wulfric of Haselbury, Anchorite, page 65:

     What seems to have tipped the balance was class, “deediness,” and the clout, not least political, behind the successful.

2. Ostentatious busyness; A type of showiness that seeks to seem important.
   • 1938, Faith Compton Mackenzie, As Much as I Dare: The Autobiography of Faith Compton Mackenzie, page 102:

     Occasionally her pretty arm would be waved with the rest of the eager crowd, but it was a gay gesture of jingling bracelets free from smugness or deediness .

   • 1954, Victor Canning, A Handful of Silver, page 170:

     I wished I had a clear, cold mind that could cut through cant and deediness to truth.

   • 1962, The Illustrated London News - Volume 240, page 501:

     the Corgi shares an inimitable "deediness” with the man who believes that everybody else needs scrutiny and advice

   • 1968, Victor Sawdon Pritchett, A Cab at the Door: A Memoir, page 125:

     I had a brilliant idea which I am afraid exposes the dirty cunning — the “deediness” as Mother called it — and flightiness of my priggish character.