Why “barrenness” is a great word
BARRENNESS — [Noun] The state or quality of being barren, especially in lacking the capacity to produce vegetation, offspring, or desired results. From Middle English bareynnesse, equivalent to barren (of uncertain origin, possibly from Old French) + the noun-forming suffix -ness (indicating a state or quality). First attested in the late 14th century. Unlike "sterility," which denotes a clinical incapacity for biological life, or "desolation," which mourns a bleak emptiness born of ruin, barrenness is the chronic, fundamental absence of generative force. It is the unyielding chalk of a dry upland where seeds parch; the silent, echoing chamber of a mind that can form no new thought; and the relentless aridity of a season that offers neither rain nor respite. It is a condition not of what has been lost, but of what was never, and may never be, possible.