Definition of "rankness"
rankness
noun
countable and uncountable, plural ranknesses
Exuberant or uncontrolled growth.
Quotations
Like Janus he the stubborn Soil manur’d, / With Rules of Husbandry the Rankness cur’d: / Tam’d us to Manners, when the Stage was rude; / And boistrous English Wit, with Art indu’d.
1706, John Dryden, “To my Dear Friend Mr. Congreve, On His Comedy, call’d, The Double-Dealer” in The Double Dealer by William Congreve, London: Jacob Tonson
[…] briar and bramble shoots lay athwart one’s path with thorns like arrowheads often concealed in tangles of grass and willowherb and cow parsley, while underlying this rankness, like a reminder of a more elegant epoch, one was aware at times of Howard’s cultivation, rose and magnolia and peony continued to flower […]
1970, Barry Unsworth, The Hide, New York: Norton, published 1997, page 139
(obsolete) Exuberance, excessiveness.
Quotations
First Gentleman. God save you, sir! where have you been broiling?Third Gentleman. Among the crowd i’ the Abbey; where a fingerCould not be wedged in more: I am stifledWith the mere rankness of their joy.
1613 (date written), William Shakespeare, [John Fletcher], “The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act IV, scene i]