different between seedtime vs seedness

English

Etymology

seed +? time

Compare Old Icelandic sáðtími. Compare also German Saatzeit "season for sowing seed" (15th cent. as satzijt), Old Icelandic sáðtíð "April", lit. "seed time".

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?si?d?ta?m/

Noun

seedtime (countable and uncountable, plural seedtimes)

1. The time to sow seeds.
2. (figuratively) A time for new development.

Translations

References

English

Etymology

From seed +? -ness

Noun

seedness (uncountable)

1. (rare) The state or quality of being seed.
   • 1988, Peter Hayes, The Supreme Adventure: The Experience of Siddha Yoga, New York: Dell, Chapter 9, p. 163,^[1]

     […] when the seed surrenders, it becomes a tree. Seeds that don’t surrender their “seedness” only wither up and blow away.

2. (obsolete) Seedtime.
   • c. 1604, William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act I, Scene 4,^[2]

     As those that feed grow full, as blossoming time

     That from the seedness the bare fallow brings

     To teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb

     Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry.

   • 1634, Philemon Holland (translator), The Historie of the World: Commonly Called, The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus, London, Book 18, Chapter 17, p. 574,^[3]

     […] there be certaine little wormes breeding in the root, that do eat it: which happeneth by occasion of much raine falling immediatly after the seednesse, especially, when some sudden heat and drowth ensueth therupon […]

   • 1845, John James Blunt, Five Sermons Preached before the University of Cambridge, Cambridge: J. & J.J. Deighton, 1847, Sermon 4, p. 73,^[4]

     […] how does God admonish us of the value of time, by so constructing things, as that opportunities once let slip, i.e. time wasted, are never to be redeemed, do what we will to repair our folly! A seedness suffered to escape, and the harvest for the year irrecoverable […]