NASTINESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does nastiness mean? 

• NASTINESS (noun)
  The noun NASTINESS has 3 senses:

1. a state characterized by foul or disgusting dirt and refuse

2. malevolence by virtue of being malicious or spiteful or nasty

3. the quality of being highly unpleasant

  Familiarity information: NASTINESS used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• NASTINESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A state characterized by foul or disgusting dirt and refuse

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

filth; filthiness; foulness; nastiness

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

unsanitariness (a state that is not conducive to health)

Derivation:

nasty (disgustingly dirty; filled or smeared with offensive matter)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Malevolence by virtue of being malicious or spiteful or nasty

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

bitchiness; cattiness; nastiness; spite; spitefulness

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

malevolence; malevolency; malice (the quality of threatening evil)

Derivation:

nasty (characterized by obscenity)

nasty (offensive or even (of persons) malicious)

Sense 3

Meaning:

The quality of being highly unpleasant

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Context example:

I flinched at the nastiness of his wound

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

unpleasantness (the quality of giving displeasure)

Attribute:

awful; nasty (offensive or even (of persons) malicious)

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

beastliness (unpleasant nastiness; used especially of nasty weather)

Antonym:

niceness (the quality of nice)

Derivation:

nasty (offensive or even (of persons) malicious)

 Context examples 

“Another thing he wondered at in the Yahoos, was their strange disposition to nastiness and dirt; whereas there appears to be a natural love of cleanliness in all other animals.”

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The hunters were snickering, but she looked at me with a sympathy in her eyes which more than compensated for Wolf Larsen’s nastiness.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The whole sketch stood before him in letters of fire, and in such blaze of illumination he sought vainly for nastiness.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The next moment, in a flashing vision of multitudinous detail, he sighted the whole sea of life's nastiness that he had known and voyaged over and through, and he forgave her for not understanding the story.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I did indeed observe that the Yahoos were the only animals in this country subject to any diseases; which, however, were much fewer than horses have among us, and contracted, not by any ill-treatment they meet with, but by the nastiness and greediness of that sordid brute.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)