perfunctoriness means the characteristic or state of being perfunctory. It carries an Arena rating of 1116, earned across 78 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, perfunctoriness ranks #2,049 of 17,128 for Most Ponderous Words, #5,240 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #8,276 of 17,151 for The Improbable, #8,998 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
Why “perfunctoriness” is a great word
PERFUNCTORINESS — [Noun] The quality of an action performed as a hollow duty, with only the barest, most indifferent effort to satisfy its formal requirement. From the adjective perfunctory (from Late Latin perfunctōrius, "careless, negligent," from past participle of Latin perfungī, "to perform, discharge, get through with") + the English suffix -ness, forming abstract nouns indicating a state or quality. First attested in English in 1626. Unlike meticulousness, which implies painstaking care, or earnestness, which denotes sincere zeal, perfunctoriness is the spiritless discharge of obligation. It is the signature scrawled without looking at the page, the rote apology mumbled without eye contact, the ritual kiss brushed upon a cheek already turning away—a hollow performance that sustains the structure of duty while quietly abandoning its soul.
Etymology
From perfunctory + -ness.
noun
- The characteristic or state of being perfunctory.e.g.“When at dusk she reached the Melchester station her husband was there to meet her, but in his perfunctoriness and her preoccupation they did not see each other, and she went out of the station alone.” — 1894, Thomas Hardy, “On the Western Circuit”, in Life’s Little Ironies […], London: Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC, section VI, page 121:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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