[f. as prec. + -NESS.] The state or quality of being vivid, in senses of the adj. a. Of color, light, etc.
1667–8. Boyle, in Phil. Trans., II. 593. To examine … the Conjecture,… That the durableness of the Light … might proceed in great part from the Vividness of it.
a. 1700. Evelyn, Diary, 22 June 1664. With such lively colours, that for splendour and vividness we have nothing in Europe that approches it.
1794. G. Adams, Nat. & Exp. Philos., IV. xliv. 190. In the vividness of its lustre … it exceeded any thing he had ever seen before.
1836. Macgillivray, Trav. Humboldt, xviii. 256. Numerous palms are reflected by the surface of the river with a vividness almost as bright as that of the objects themselves.
1859. Geo. Eliot, A. Bede, ii. The delicate colouring of her face seemed to gather a calm vividness, like flowers at evening.
1883. Miss M. Betham-Edwards, Disarmed, xxxiv. For a few minutes the flashes of lightning were awful in their vividness.
b. Of ideas, conceptions, impressions, etc.
1768. Tucker, Lt. Nat., II. I. xiii. 189. A variety of ideas afford us no notion of succession unless we perceive one come before the other; nor can it be imagined that their degrees of vividness or faintness will do the job.
1812. Sir H. Davy, Chem. Philos., 17. The notions of fairies and of genii, which have been depicted with so much vividness of fancy and liveliness of description.
1858. J. Martineau, Stud. Chr., 207. The very vividness of the conception may have rendered him insensible to the precariousness of the proof.
1873. Symonds, Grk. Poets, xi. 356. Death at sea touched the Greek imagination with peculiar vividness.
c. Of description, narrative, etc.
1828. Miss Mitford, in L’Estrange, Life (1870), II. xi. 257. She has a mastery of the subject, and a truth and vividness of expression, second only to Cowper.
1845. M. Pattison, Ess. (1889), I. 7. His graphic narrative has all the vividness that art can give to description of what the describer has not himself actually witnessed.
1884. R. W. Church, Bacon, ix. 220. In the essay on Friendship he describes the process with a vividness which tells of his own experience.
