preferablenessn.

1648 W. Montagu Miscellanea Spiritualia i. x. §7. 121 My purpose is not to measure or weigh the preferablenesse of severall vocations.

1699 Ld. Shaftesbury Inq. conc. Virtue ii. ii. 197 What has bin said concerning the preferableness of the mental Pleasures to sensual.

1714 J. Peirce Useful Ministry a Valid One 27 The Apostle in this very Epistle argues from some such Considerations the Preferableness of his own Ministry to that of his Competitors.

1773 C. Talbot Ess. Var. Subj. I. i. 3 I could find no better Way of accounting for it, than from the Preferableness of any allotted Employment, to an inactive Indulgence of selfish Pleasure.

1821–2 W. Hazlitt On Familiar Style (ed. 2) II. viii. 187 Out of eight or ten words equally common, equally intelligible, with nearly equal pretensions, it is a matter of some nicety and discrimination to pick out the very one, the preferableness of which is scarcely perceptible, but decisive.

1857 T. P. Thompson Audi Alteram Partem (1858) I. xxv. 97 Firmly penetrated with the preferableness of honest commerce.

1954 Jrnl. Symbolic Logic 19 253 For example, the fact that Σ_∞ is directly subject to Gödel's theorems while the theory Σ, so far as I can see, is not, is one indication of the preferableness of Σ.

2010 K. Leyton-Brown Pract. Execution Canada vi. 81 Although debate occasionally arose regarding the preferableness of some other method, none was ever adopted.