[ad. schol. L. quidditas: see QUID sb.1 and -ITY; so F. quiddité (14th c.).]
1. The real nature or essence of a thing; that which makes a thing what it is.
1569. J. Sanford, trans. Agrippa’s Van. Artes, 21. The true demonstration … is that whiche is made (as the Logitioners speake) by Quiddites, and by the proper difference of thinges.
1628. T. Spencer, Logick, 75. Dissent is in the qualitie not the quidditie, or being of the subject.
1670. Maynwaring, Vita Sana, x. 106. These notions being too … remote from the quiddity, essence and spring of the Disease.
1710. Berkeley, Princ. Hum. Knowl., § 81. The positive abstract idea of quiddity, entity, or existence.
1828. De Quincey, Rhetoric, Wks. 1862, X. 76. The quiddity, or characteristic difference, of poetry as distinguished from prose.
1897. S. S. Sprigge, Life of T. Wakley, xiii. 125. The quiddity of each attitude was the desire to curtail the privileges of the hospital surgeons.
b. Something intangible. rare–1.
1774. Burke, Sp. Amer. Tax., Wks. 1842, I. 158. Fighting for a phantom; a quiddity; a thing that wants, not only a substance, but even a name.
2. A subtlety or captious nicety in argument; a quirk, quibble. (Alluding to scholastic arguments on the ‘quiddity’ of things.)
1539. Taverner, Gard. Wysed., I. 18 b. [He] must nat playe with hys sophemes and quyddities.
1579. Fulke, Heskins’ Parl., 475. Hee saith hee will not vse the quiddities of the schooles, but plaine examples.
1678. R. Barclay, Apol. Quakers, § 12. 371. To find out and invent subtile Distinctions and Quiddities.
1731. Plain Reas. for Presbyt. Dissent., 138. The most honest cause is often run down with the torrent and speat of law-quirks and quiddities.
1807. W. Irving, Salmag. (1824), 33. I humbly solicit … A quiddity, quirk, or remonstrance to send.
1877. C. Geikie, Christ, xxv. (1879), 281. Their endless quiddities and quillets, and casuistical cases.
Comb. 1863. De Morgan, Pref., in From Matter to Spirit, 40. I went back to the old quiddity-mongers.
b. Subtlety (of wit); ability or tendency to employ quiddities.
1600. W. Watson, Decacordon (1602), 140. How shall euer those come in heauen, that haue neither qualitie of body to get it … nor quidditie of wit to keepe it?
1881. W. S. Gilbert, Patience. To stuff his conversation full of quibble and of quiddity.
1884. R. Buchanan, in Pall Mall Gaz., 16 April, 1/2. With the intellectual strength and bodily height of an Anak, he [Charles Reade] possessed the quiddity and animal spirits of Tom Thumb.
