[f. WOODY + -NESS.] The quality or condition of being woody.
1. Woody texture, consistence or appearance.
1601. Holland, Pliny, XV. xxviii. I. 450. Some fruits,… neither without in shell, nor within-forth in kernell, have any of this woodinesse.
1670. Evelyn, Sylva, xxx. (ed. 2), 149. The Vatican Ilex, the Vine which was grown to that bulk and Woodinesse, as to make Columns in Juno’s Temple.
1760. Ellis, in Phil. Trans., LI. 933. It promises, from the thickness and woodiness of its stem,… to become a shrub of six or seven feet high.
1850. Nichol, Archit. Heavens, i. 17. Until individual trees could no longer be distinguished, and the view terminated in a … vague appearance, which I may be permitted to call a diffused woodiness.
1860. Ruskin, Mod. Paint., V. VI. viii. § 10. 71. A very characteristic example of two faults in tree-drawing; namely, the loss not only of grace and spring, but of woodiness.
2. The condition of being full of woods or forests; prevalence or abundance of woodland; concr. woody growth.
1796. Marshall, Planting, I. 119. By Woody Waste [is meant] grass land over-run with rough woodiness.
1799. Stuart, in Owen, Wellesley’s Desp. (1877), 114. Their movements were so well concealed by the woodiness of the country.
1869. Blackie, Lett. to Wife (1909), 180. The rich-sloping … woodiness that you remember on the Rhine.
