Have any of you heard this word before? It is new to me, but apparently from my own profession, Librarianship. OED says:

quote:

The quality or fact of relating to or being about something; Philos. (of a mental state, symbol, representation, etc.) the property of being about something (existent or non-existent); cf. intentionality n. Additions b.

Your thoughts?

I'd say it appears nonsensical and unnecessary on its face except for this.

Welcome back, Cat! Are you somewhat settled in?

I've not heard of "aboutness." I remember "isness" from the yogi days of the sixties, though. I think that Irish guru, Krishnamurphy, started that one.

Yes, Cat. It's great to see you here!

I've not heard of aboutness, but you are right that it seems to be a librarianship (another word I've not heard) word. I also found some articles on aboutness in psychology - also here and here. There's a little philosophy threaded in as well.

I had not heard about aboutness, but the linguists and philosophers of language mentioned in the Wikipedia article are not unknown in their fields. It seems a term that has been used for a while, and I am sure its users do not find it problematic. For information sciences, it is probably as useful as findability. I, for one, never begrudge a field its terminology and/or jargon.

Knowledge, so far as that is judgement and inference, is primarily and explicitly thinking ‘about’ an Other. And even though discursive thought may find its concentrated fulfilment in immediate or intuitive knowledge, its character of ‘Aboutness’ is not thereby eliminated.

- 1906 H. H. Joachim Nature of Truth iv. 174

‘Aboutness’

Come to think of it, there's a long tradition of turning a part of speech into other part of speech with some degree of abstractness thrown in for good measure: quiddity 'whatness' (< Latin quidditas < quid 'what'). haecceity 'thisness' (< Latin haecceitas < haec 'this', this and the previous both terms in scholastic philosophy), being there (< German Dasein, cf. French calque être-là, term in existential philosophy), suchness (? Sanskrit tathatā 'thusness, suchness', Buddhist term).

We can borrow words from another language or translate them literally (calque) or invent new words by the process of derivational morphology (or by imparting new meaning to old terms, cf. the many different meanings of file over the years from a string to packaging of electronic data).

I always thought file made perfect sense because it's the electronic equivalent to a file cabinet for paper documents.

it's the electronic equivalent to a file cabinet for paper documents.

Yeah, but before it was that, it was the red, silk thread that held together the pages in what later became the file.

I was reading the newspaper review of a modern art exhibition a little while ago. An especially tactile thing he describes as having "thinginess". I could quite understand the quiddity.

I didn't know that thinginess was a word, but apparently it is.

thinginess

There's also truthiness.

English is a very productive language. We can add the "iness" or the "ness" suffixes to just about anything. That's the beautiful wordcraftiness of it.

Wordiness isn't such a good idea, though.

quote:

Originally posted by BobHale:
English is a very productive language. We can add the "iness" or the "ness" suffixes to just about anything. That's the beautiful wordcraftiness of it.

So any Scottish lake has lochness?

I was thinking about it and it seems to me that

Xness is the essence of being X

but

Xiness is the quality of being like X without actually being X.

So do you think there could be any use for a term of "aboutiness", like being about something but not actually about it.

It seems a term that has been used for a while

FWIW - Neal Stephenson invokes "aboutness" toward the end of his cosmic novel Anathem - which I suspect means the concept has been around for millennia (as have many others in that book, surprisingly enough for a book of fiction)

At least since 1906, as I wrote earlier.

Well, Hab. How nice to see you posting up above!

Cat, here is a Google books link using "tumble-aboutiness"