INQUISITIVENESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does inquisitiveness mean? 

• INQUISITIVENESS (noun)
  The noun INQUISITIVENESS has 1 sense:

1. a state of active curiosity

  Familiarity information: INQUISITIVENESS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INQUISITIVENESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A state of active curiosity

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

curiousness; inquisitiveness

Hypernyms ("inquisitiveness" is a kind of...):

curiosity; wonder (a state in which you want to learn more about something)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "inquisitiveness"):

nosiness; prying; snoopiness (offensive inquisitiveness)

Derivation:

inquisitive (showing curiosity)

inquisitive (inquiring or appearing to inquire)

 Context examples 

Certainly; it would indeed be very impertinent and inhuman in me to trouble you with any inquisitiveness of mine.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

One evening, while, with her usual child-like activity, and thoughtless yet not offensive inquisitiveness, she was rummaging the cupboard and the table-drawer of my little kitchen, she discovered first two French books, a volume of Schiller, a German grammar and dictionary, and then my drawing-materials and some sketches, including a pencil-head of a pretty little cherub-like girl, one of my scholars, and sundry views from nature, taken in the Vale of Morton and on the surrounding moors.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The Miss Steeles, as she expected, had now all the benefit of these jokes, and in the eldest of them they raised a curiosity to know the name of the gentleman alluded to, which, though often impertinently expressed, was perfectly of a piece with her general inquisitiveness into the concerns of their family.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)