[f. BRUTE a. + -NESS.]
1. Rudeness, roughness, savageness, brutality.
1538. Cdl. Pole, in Strype, Eccl. Mem., I. I. xxxviii. 457. The bruteness and danger of the thing.
1577. trans. Bullinger’s Decades (1587), 208. Crueltie in reuenging, an vnappeased stomach, brutenesse in rebelling … are the thinges that in warre are worthie to be blamed.
1883. G. Macdonald, Donal Grant, III. xxix. 282. He seemed to have become in a measure aware of the bruteness of the life he had hitherto led.
† 2. Unintelligence, stupidity, dullness. Obs.
1590. Spenser, F. Q., II. viii. 12. Thou dotard vile, That with thy bruteness shendst thy comely age.
1594. Sylvester, Paradox agst. Lib., 591. ’Tis in truth your brutenesse in misdeeming Things evill, that are good.
3. Want of consciousness, materiality. rare.
1836. Emerson, Nature, 93. The immobility or bruteness of nature, is the absence of spirit.
