[f. as prec. + -NESS.] The quality or condition of being faultless. † a. Freedom from blame; blamelessness (obs.). b. Freedom from defect or blemish.
1580. Sidney, Arcadia (1622), 429. But greater is the wrong … you doe unto me, to thinke mee either so childish, as not to perceive your faithfull faultlesnesse, or perceiving it, so basely disposed, as to let my heart be overthrown, standing upon it self in so unspotted a purenesse.
1754. Edwards, Freedom of the Will, IV. iii. (ed. 4), 292. Our ideas of excusableness or faultlessness is tied to these terms and phrases by a strong habit.
1818. Hazlitt, Eng. Poets, iv. 99. His excellence is by no means faultlessness.
a. 1853. Robertson, Serm., Ser. II. 197. Perfection is more than faultlessness.
1858. Doran, The History of Court Fools, 4. Venus, clad in her usual attire, and proud in the conviction of her faultlessness, passed by Sir Momus, and turning gracefully in his presence, like Mademoiselle Rosati before a box-full of her admirers, defied him to detect a flaw in her unequalled and dazzling form.
