@Setanta,
Setanta wrote:However, i don't believe there is such a word as "severeness"--that's why we have the word severity.
Collins English Dictionary allows it as a synonym for 'severity', although it appears to be unknown in Oxford or Cambridge. I agree that 'severity' is preferable, but a new site to me, onelook.com (a web search aggregator) shows this... (I daresay that some may be safely ignored, and probably some are copies of others)
Quote:
General dictionaries General (12 matching dictionaries)
severeness: Collins English Dictionary [home, info]
severeness: Vocabulary.com [home, info]
severeness: Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, 11th Edition [home, info]
severeness: Wordnik [home, info]
severeness: Wiktionary [home, info]
severeness: Dictionary.com [home, info]
severeness: Rhymezone [home, info]
severeness: Free Dictionary [home, info]
severeness: Mnemonic Dictionary [home, info]
severeness: WordNet 1.7 Vocabulary Helper [home, info]
severeness: LookWAYup Translating Dictionary/Thesaurus [home, info]
severeness: Dictionary/thesaurus [home, info]
Business dictionaries Business (1 matching dictionary)
severeness: Legal dictionary [home, info]
Computing dictionaries Computing (1 matching dictionary)
severeness: Encyclopedia [home, info]
Medicine dictionaries Medicine (1 matching dictionary)
severeness: Medical dictionary [home, info]