[See -NESS.]
1. The state or quality of being broken.
1666. J. Smith, Old Age, 84–5. All those infirmities that are incident to them by reason of age, whether looseness, hollowness, rottenness, brokenness, blackness, foulness [of the teeth], [etc.].
1757. Gray, Wks. (1825), II. 203. It is the brokenness, the ungrammatical position, the total subversion of the period that charms me.
1842. Mrs. Browning, Grk. Chr. Poets, 157. His pauses frequent to brokenness.
a. 1856. H. Miller, Rambl. Geol., 338. As near the steep edge as the brokenness of the ground permitted.
2. fig. The state of being crushed or overwhelmed with sorrow, misfortune, etc.; contrition (obs.); prostration, despair.
1617. Hieron, Wks. (1620), II. 371. The spirit of them both was full of contrition…. Thus was their Brokennesse. Now see how pleasing it was, and how accepted.
1642. Rogers, Naaman, 133. To prepare the soule with brokennesse and emptinesse.
1655. Life, in Gouge’s Comm. Heb. His confessions were accompanied with much sense of sin, broakennesse of heart, self-abhorrency.
1813. Byron, Corsair, III. xxii. In helpless—hopeless—brokenness of heart.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., IV. 113. Mere stupefaction and brokenness of heart.
