[f. KNOTTY + -NESS.]

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  1.  The quality or condition of being knotty (lit. and fig.).

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1607.  Hieron, Wks., I. 409. Such children, the knottines of whose nature is refined and reformed and made smooth by grace.

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1616.  Donne, Serm. (ed. Alford), V. cxxxvii. 463. The wryness, the knottiness, the entangling of the serpent.

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1662.  Herne, in Collect. (O.H.S.), I. 246. The bark of such pollards cannot be gotten off because of its knottyness.

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1868.  Browning, Ring & Bk., II. 1167. Never was such a tangled knottiness, But thus authority cuts the Gordian thro’.

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  2.  Geom. The minimum number of nodes in the projection of a knot (sense 9) on a plane or similar surface.

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1877.  Tait, in Trans. R. Soc. Edin., XXVIII. 148. There are, therefore, projections of every knot which give a minimum number of intersections,… this minimum number … we will call Knottiness.

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