wrongness

From Middle English wrongnesse, equivalent to wrong +‎ -ness.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈɹɒŋ.nəs/
• Rhymes: -ɒŋ.nəs

wrongness (usually uncountable, plural wrongnesses)

1. The quality of being wrong; error or fault.
   • 1917, Jack London, Jerry of the Islands, New York: Macmillan, Chapter 4, p. 47,

     Often, on the plantation, he had seen the white men take drinks. But there was something somehow different in the manner of Borckman’s taking a drink. Jerry was aware, vaguely, that there was something surreptitious about it. What was wrong he did not know, yet he sensed the wrongness and watched suspiciously.

   • 1961, C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, London: Faber & Faber, 1964, Chapter 3, p. 30,

     It’s not true that I’m always thinking of H. Work and conversation make that impossible. But the times when I’m not are perhaps my worst. For then, though I have forgotten the reason, there is spread over everything a vague sense of wrongness, of something amiss.

2. Wrong or reprehensible things or actions.
   • 1907, George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara, New York: Brentano’s, 1917, Act I, p. 57,

     But your father didn’t exactly do wrong things: he said them and thought them: that was what was so dreadful. He really had a sort of religion of wrongness. Just as one doesn’t mind men practising immorality so long as they own that they are in the wrong by preaching morality; so I couldn’t forgive Andrew for preaching immorality while he practised morality.

   • 1937, Elizabeth Sparks, Interview transcribed in Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, Washington: Library of Congress, 1941, Volume 17, Virginia Narratives,

     Old Massa done so much wrongness I couldn’t tell yer all of it.

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