English

Noun

crookedness ‎(countable and uncountable, plural crookednesses)

1. The state of being crooked
   • 1880, Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, Chapter 14,

     The river was full of logs—long, slender, barkless pine logs—and we leaned on the rails of the bridge, and watched the men put them together into rafts. These rafts were of a shape and construction to suit the crookedness and extreme narrowness of the Neckar.

   • 1924, Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Chapter 2,

     But are sailors […] without vices? No; but less often than with landsmen do their vices, so called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality after long constraint; frank manifestations in accordance with natural law.

   • 1944, Emily Carr, The House of All Sorts, "Mean Baby,"

     She had cost me two tenants and no end of sleep, had heated my temper to boiling, yet, somehow I could not hate that baby. The meanest thing about her was the way she could make you feel yourself. One has to make a living and one must sleep. It is one of the crookednesses of life when a little yellow-haired baby can cause you so much trouble and yet won't even let you hate her.

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