allusivenessn.

1669 H. More Expos. 7 Epist. ix. 143 The multifarious Allusivenesse of the Propheticall style.

1875 M. A. Lower Eng. Surnames II. App. 128 The allusiveness so much objected to by the lovers of simple and non-emblematical heraldry.

1954 P. E. Wheelwright Burning Fountain vi. 118 They become fossilized and enter into our everyday speech as steno-symbols which have lost their one-time color and allusiveness and power to stir.

2009 P. Crowther Phenomenology of Visual Arts vi. 118 Through the allusiveness of their meaning, they [sc. abstract works] provide objective models which reveal the constitutive role of individuality in the projection of all aspects of contextual space.

1791 J. Whitaker Rev. Gibbon's Decline & Fall v. 254 The quick and short allusiveness of it [sc. Gibbon's language].

1842 Gentleman's Mag. June 614/2 The reader will now, probably, have had sufficient proof of the pervading Allusiveness of armorial bearings to the names of their owners.

1863 Sat. Rev. 415 Half-jocular allusiveness, which is incomparably more suggestive and more full of temptation than anything else.

1871 R. H. Hutton Ess. II. 299 The indirectness, the allusiveness, the educated reticence of the artists.

1946 Sewanee Rev. 54 485 Allusiveness in poetry is one of several critical issues by which we have illustrated the more abstract issue of intentionalism.

1977 C. G. Wolff Feast of Words (1978) iii. 219 But this is not—at least not in the usual sense—autobiography, for all its flirtatious allusiveness.

2004 Times Lit. Suppl. 7 May 21/3 On the whole, Lighthousekeeping's allusiveness is playful, if a bit laboured.