Definition of "hairiness"
hairiness
noun
countable and uncountable, plural hairinesses
The characteristic of being hairy.
Quotations
We have had (says he) another of this kind brought us out of the East-Indies, which being planted was in shew like the former, but came not to perfection, the unkindly season not suffering it to shew the flower; but of the Cods that were brought, some were smaller, shorter, and rounder then the Garden kind; others much longer, and many growing together, as it were in clusters, and cover'd all over with a brown short hairiness, so fine, that if any of it be rubb'd, or fall on the back of ones hand, or other tender parts of the skin, it will cause a kind of itching […]
1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia, Observ. XXVI
The fore-feet of the Yahoo differed from my hands in nothing else but the length of the nails, the coarseness and brownness of the palms, and the hairiness on the backs.
1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume II, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], part IV (A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms)
Spanberg, the Russian navigator, landed, he says, in a great island from 43° to 50° lat., speaks of the uncommon hairiness of the natives, and of their wearing of silver in their ears.
1804, William Robert Broughton, A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, Book I, p. 92, footnote