morbidness

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mor·bid

(môr′bĭd)

adj.

1. Given to or characterized by unwholesome thoughts or feelings, especially of death or disease: read the account of the murder with a morbid interest.

a. Of, relating to, or caused by disease; pathological or diseased: morbid changes in tissues.

b. Psychologically unhealthy or unwholesome: a morbid fear of heights.

[Latin morbidus, diseased, from morbus, disease; see mer- in Indo-European roots.]

mor′bid·ly adv.

mor′bid·ness n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Noun	1.	morbidness - an abnormally gloomy or unhealthy state of mind; "his fear of being alone verges on morbidity" morbidity cognitive state, state of mind - the state of a person's cognitive processes
	2.	morbidness - the quality of being unhealthful and generally bad for you unwholesomeness, morbidity quality - an essential and distinguishing attribute of something or someone; "the quality of mercy is not strained"--Shakespeare noisomeness, noxiousness, harmfulness - the quality of being noxious perniciousness, toxicity - grave harmfulness or deadliness deadliness, lethality - the quality of being deadly jejunity, jejuneness - quality of lacking nutritive value putrescence, rottenness - the quality of rotting and becoming putrid unhealthfulness - the quality of promoting poor health

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But still more, this craving for notoriety was a symptom of the intense morbidness which now pervaded his nature.

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Nor will it at all detract from him, dramatically regarded, if either by birth or other circumstances, he have what seems a half wilful overruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature.

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There was no morbidness in Phoebe; if there had been, the old Pyncheon House was the very locality to ripen it into incurable disease.

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Dimmesdale would perhaps have seen this individual's character more perfectly, if a certain morbidness, to which sick hearts are liable, had not rendered him suspicious of all mankind.

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Vain and ambitious almost to morbidness, he had had much to put up with in the last two months, and was seeking feverishly for some means of enabling himself to lead a more presentable kind of existence.