RASHNESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does rashness mean? 

• RASHNESS (noun)
  The noun RASHNESS has 2 senses:

1. the trait of acting rashly and without prudence

2. the trait of giving little thought to danger

  Familiarity information: RASHNESS used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• RASHNESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The trait of acting rashly and without prudence

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

heedlessness; mindlessness; rashness

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

imprudence (a lack of caution in practical affairs)

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

lightheadedness (a frivolous lack of prudence)

Derivation:

rash (imprudently incurring risk)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The trait of giving little thought to danger

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

foolhardiness; rashness; recklessness

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

thoughtlessness; unthoughtfulness (the trait of not thinking carefully before acting)

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

adventurism (recklessness in politics or foreign affairs)

brashness (the trait of being rash and hasty)

desperation (desperate recklessness)

Derivation:

rash (marked by defiant disregard for danger or consequences)

 Context examples 

The instant that I uttered the words I regretted the rashness of my speech.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I had not gone a hundred yards before I deeply repented my rashness.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He was not prone to rashness and precipitate action; and in the bitter hatred between him and Spitz he betrayed no impatience, shunned all offensive acts.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

Would Mr. Darcy then consider the rashness of your original intentions as atoned for by your obstinacy in adhering to it?

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

The other gentlemen speculated with equal rashness in all sorts of frail trifles, and wandered helplessly about afterward, burdened with wax flowers, painted fans, filigree portfolios, and other useful and appropriate purchases.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its commission.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I know also that he has much at stake upon this event, and that he has plunged upon it with a rashness which made his friends think that he had some private reason for being satisfied as to the result.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But there have been times since, in my manhood, many times there have been, when I have thought, Is it possible, among the possibilities of hidden things, that in the sudden rashness of the child and her wild look so far off, there was any merciful attraction of her into danger, any tempting her towards him permitted on the part of her dead father, that her life might have a chance of ending that day?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

At last, I fixed upon a resolution, for which it is probable I may incur some censure, and not unjustly; for I confess I owe the preserving of mine eyes, and consequently my liberty, to my own great rashness and want of experience; because, if I had then known the nature of princes and ministers, which I have since observed in many other courts, and their methods of treating criminals less obnoxious than myself, I should, with great alacrity and readiness, have submitted to so easy a punishment.

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

Then he was a masterful dog, and what made him dangerous was the fact that the club of the man in the red sweater had knocked all blind pluck and rashness out of his desire for mastery.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)