English

Noun

noxiousness ‎(usually uncountable, plural noxiousnesses)

1. the state of being noxious
   • 2007 June 8, “The Treatment”, in Chicago Reader:

     Though she's superficial to the point of noxiousness and obsessed with amassing cultural cache, her ridiculous affectations make up for it.

   • 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 1, in Internal Combustion:

     If successful, Edison and Ford—in 1914—would move society away from the […] hazards of gasoline cars: air and water pollution, noise and noxiousness, constant coughing and the undeniable rise in cancers caused by smoke exhaust particulates.

   • 2003 November 28, Chuck Shepherd, “News of the Weird”, in Chicago Reader:

     Among the worst jobs in science, according to the October issue of Popular Science: (15) fish counters, who watch the fish ladders built into dams in the Pacific Northwest for eight hours at a time, pressing a particular button every time they see a fish of a certain species swim past; (11) the two remaining government bureaucrats whose job it is to convince Americans of the merits of the metric system; (4) mosquito researchers in Brazil, who endure up to 17 bites a minute on three-hour shifts (the most troublesome species only responds to human bait) and hope not to get malaria; (1) flatus odor judges working for Minnesota gastroenterologist Michael Levitt, who feeds subjects pinto beans, gathers the resulting gases in plastic tubes, and then has the judges sniff more than 100 samples, rating them for noxiousness (the chief culprit seems to be hydrogen sulfide).

   • 1919, George Herbert Fosdike Nichols (a.k.a. Quex), Pushed and the Return Push:

     Ripening blackberries even now loaded the bramble bushes, but the foul noxiousness of gas shells had made them uneatable.

   • 1916, E. Arnold Bennett, The Lion's Share:

     Until that quarrel, the exceeding noxiousness of the Papal doctrine had not clearly presented itself to Mr. Moze.

   • 1891, Frank F. Ellinwood, Oriental Religions and Christianity:

     Whatever he has assigned to each at the first creation, noxiousness or harmlessness, gentleness or ferocity, virtue or sin, truth or falsehood, that clings to it."

   • 1858, John Addington Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2:

     He only perceived a difference in the degrees of their noxiousness to Europe.