whenceness

whence +‎ -ness

whenceness (countable and uncountable, plural whencenesses)

1. The state or condition of being from somewhere.
   • 1911, Outing: Sport, Adventure, Travel, Fiction - Volume 57:

     As we followed him along the street, he explained our whyness, whenceness, and whitherness to all the loafing children of the sun who inquired of him.

   • 1971, Jerry H. Gill, The possibility of religious knowledge, page 56:

     Rather, the term "absolute" is employed to call attention to the fact that in their immediate self-consciousness all men are aware of the radical "whenceness" of their entire existence.

   • 2019, Leo Steinberg, Sheila Schwartz, Michelangelo's Painting: Selected Essays, page 10:

     Biological whenceness blazoned ad oculos.

2. An unspecified location or condition from which something or someone has come.
   • 1898, Francis Bartow Lloyd, Lily C. Lloyd, Sketches of Country Life, page 175:

     The "wherefores and whenceness. "

   • 1937, All about Hawaii, page 44:

     No one knows how long it took the deep-sea canoes to reach Hawaii from New Zealand, or other whencenesses.

   • 1995, John Robert Colombo, Ghost Stories of Ontario, page 39:

     Every evening, between 8 and 9 o'clock, stones kept falling upon the roof of Mr. Elihu Neff's residence, in this township, and there was no accounting for the whenceness of their coming.

   • 2008, S. Brivic, Joyce through Lacan and Žižek: Explorations, page 116:

     Therefore we don't really know our minds, don't know what our intention or “whenceness” is unless we understand where it came from.