Also 4 queyntness, 5 qwhayntnes, 6 queint-, queyntnesse. [f. QUAINT a. + -NESS.] The quality or condition of being quaint, in various senses of the adj.
13[?]. Coer de L., 1836. Al we should us venge fond, With queyntness and with strength of hond.
1483. Cath. Angl., 296/1. A Qwhayntnes; vbi wylynes.
1593. Drayton, Eclogues, ix. 133. The easie turnes and queyntnesse of the Song.
1603. Florio, Montaigne, I. xxv. (1632), 80. All niceness and quaintnesse in clothing.
1620. I. V., trans. P. du Moulin’s Serm., Rom. i. 16. 11–2. That the Gospel should bee clad in the simple attire of a vulgar stile, destitute of quaintnesse and eloquence.
1702. Engl. Theophrast., 234. Some make the quaintness of their wit, to consist in employing bad Instruments.
1765. Blackstone, Comm., I. 72. Coke; a man of infinite learning … though not a little infected with the pedantry and quaintness of the times he lived in.
1866. Geo. Eliot, F. Holt, II. xxiii. 122. There’s a simplicity and quaintness about the letter which rather pleases me.
b. A particular instance of this.
1642. Milton, Apol. Smect., xi. Wks. (1851), 313. Which … must needs be a strange quaintnesse in ordinary prayer.
1830. H. N. Coleridge, Grk. Poets (1834), 90. The indecorums and quaintnesses with which Homer may be reproached.
1832. L. Hunt, Poems, Pref. 15. The occasional quaintnesses … which formerly disfigured the story of Rimini.
