• Undeadliness

    Origin

    A calque (or in some cases a continuation) of the Middle English undeadlinesse, vndeedlinesse, undeadlichnesse, from Old English undēadlīcnes ("immortality"), equivalent to undeadly + -ness; compare the German Unsterblichkeit, a compound formed the same way.

    Full definition of undeadliness

    Noun

    undeadliness

    (uncountable)
    1. The condition of not being susceptible to death; immortality.
      • 1852, A Modern English Version of King Alfred's Blossom-Gatherings from Saint Augustine, in The whole works of King Alfred the Great, volume 2, page 83:Although the holy fathers, who were before us, very certainly knew about that which thou formerly askedst; that is, about the undeadliness of men's souls, which was very clear in this that they naught doubted, ...
      • 1875, Emily Sarah Holt, The White Rose of Langley: a story of the court of England in the olden time, page 2:"If a man might die, and have done with it all! But to meet God! And 'tis no sweven,1 ne fallacy, this dread undeadliness
    2 — it is real."
      • 1. Dream 2. Immortality.
      • 1880, Richard Robert Madden, Farewell lines to an old friend, in The Memoirs (chiefly autobiographical) from 1798 to 1886 of Richard Robert Madden (1891), page 152:to find the same
        Old traits of time’s undeadliness and fame
        In Dante’s visions, and in Shakespeare’s lore,
        And Chaucer’s quaint and graphic strains of yore.
      • 1929, a work by Walter Hilton (p. 1350 a. 1396), translated into English by Dorothy Jones in Minor works of Walter Hilton:So is the righteous man white in cleanness of soul, and therefore shall he have a white stole of undeadliness in the high Lebanon that is the bliss of heaven.
      • 1957, Richard of Saint Victor, Benjamin (p. 1154 a. 1162), Capitulum VII, translated into English Ray C. Petry in Late Medieval Mysticism, page 106:He that dwelleth between the terms hath near-hand forsaken deadliness, but not fully, and hath near-hand gotten undeadliness, but not fully.
      • 2007, The Cloude of Unknowyng (p. 1350 a. 1400), translated into English by Evelyn Underhill in The Cloud of Unknowing:To this will I answer thee, that He had been dead, and was clad with undeadliness, and so shall we be at the Day of Doom.
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