# downness
## English
### Etymology

From down +‎ -ness.

### Noun

downness (uncountable)
* (quantum mechanics) The property of being a down quark.
** 2006, Donald Gary Swanson, Quantum Mechanics: Foundations and Applications, page 287:Each of the flavors has a corresponding property, so that the down quark carries "downness," although upness and downness are rarely mentioned,
** 2011, Kenneth W. Ford, 101 Quantum Questions, page 162:The down and antidown quarks on the left have a total downness of zero, which is preserved on the right.
* The quality or state of being physically down.
** 1986, Dwight Le Merton Bolinger, Intonation and Its Parts: Melody in Spoken English, page 340:To some degree this feature determines the profiles themselves: upness in B and downness in A, but the downness of C, more than a downness of relaxation, is a downness of being held down.
** 1987, Kansas Quarterly - Volume 19, Issues 3-4, page 228:Walking down in the mornings, up in the afternoons, which, with the weight of the tomes, is the fundamental issue— downness, upness, when it should of course be upness, downness, the fall and the rise hardly ever to be spoken of at all, always the rise and fall of things, almost any sort of thing having its rise and then its fall, the rise necessarily preceding the fall […]
** 2010, Maureen Lockhart, The Subtle Energy Body:Whether he had any word for “down” is irrelevant, for the immediate sensation of “downness” in the body sufficed, and was already familiar.
** 2021, John Larkin, 101 Top Tips in Medicine: Cynical and Otherwise:We now have two different views (at right angles to each other) of the heart's electrical activity, and can give a precise description of the cardiac axis using the positiveness of these two for its leftness and downness.
* Lowness of pitch or tone.
** 1914, Charles Alexander McMurry, Handbook of Practice for Teachers, page 133:If children are taught to listen to certain definite sounds (whisles, birds, singing, etc.) they will soon observe something as to the "upness" and "downness" of tones;
** 1974, John Frederick Nims, Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry, page 180:The upness and downness of vowel sounds affect us physically in different ways .
** 1983, Hilary Everett Apfelstadt, An Investigation of the Effects of Melodic Perception Instruction on the Pitch Discrimination and Vocal Accuracy of Kindergarten Children, page 15:Melodic perception instruction is an approach which focuses on the development of perception of melodic aspects such as range (relative higness or lowness of pitches in a sequence), direction (upness and downness) contour (shape of the melody or tonal pattern), interval (distance between pitches) , and rhythm (relative length of sounds in relation to the underlying pulse.)
** 2011, Shelby Wolf, Karen Coats, Patricia A. Enciso, Handbook of Research on Children's and Young Adult Literature:I then split the columns into squares to mimic the up and downness of pitch, matching each square to its appropriate color, surrounded by the corresponding harmonic color.
* The quality or state of being low in a social hierarchy; lowliness.
** 1996, Benjamin Bowser, Raymond G. Hunt, Impacts of Racism on White Americans, page 192:The downs spend a lot of time taking the ups out to lunch and dinner to explain their downness.
** 2004, Jeri J. Jaeger, Kids' Slips, page 313:On the other hand, if a child of 2 were to say 'down' when he meant to say 'up', one could argue that the concept of 'upness' would not necessarily activate the concept of 'downness' when the child was constructing a proposition regarding an activity which involved only 'upness' (for example, 'Pick me up').
** 2005, Melinda L. De Jesus, Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory, page 145:A neocanon is formed from judgments about whether one is worthy of being included. Within the malls or neocanons of academia, the art scene, and activism, another mall exists—that of downness. In terms of downness, another Pinay community activist admitted, "I go to poetry readings and they [the art circle] don't really acknowledge me. […] ".
** 2013, John Birtchnell, Relating in Psychotherapy: The Application of a New Theory, page 143:Most usually it appears to have developed out of a response to the attempts of others to force the client into a position of downness.
* The state of having a low or disparaging mood; a feeling of depression, helplessness, or dislike.
** 2003, Robert C. Roberts, Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology, page 242:[…] the transition from the emotion of grief to the emotion of depression seems to be made by way of a mood that we might call depression —a generalized downness in one's view of things that then attaches itself, more or less non-rationally, to "objects" like the new president and my deficit of talent.
** 2009, Jeanne Holland Crowther, The Other Side of Fear, page 220:When we are overwhelmed with the pain of downness, this is probably the time that the help of a strong, nurturing ally can help lift us up.
** 2011, Lisa Appignanesi, Mad, Bad And Sad:While both classes of drugs have attractive aspects and simultaneously carry a stigma, both inevitably reduce the fullness of human life and put a stress on mood, on upness or downness and whatever produces it, above all else.

#### Related terms

* up-and-downness

### Anagrams

* Snowdens