unstraightforwardness

English

Etymology

unstraightforward +‎ -ness

Noun

unstraightforwardness (uncountable)

1. The state or quality of being unstraightforward; a lack of straightforwardness; obliqueness, evasiveness.
   • 1867, Russell Martineau (ed.), The History of Israel, Longmans, Green, and Co., translation of Heinrich Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel (1859), page 346:

     …this feature in the portrait of the Patriarch was only sublimated from the character of the Mosaic people, and intended to typify an overdone intellectual cleverness, often perhaps passing into really reprehensible deception and unstraightforwardness….

   • 1921, Wilfrid Ward, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman, volume II, Longmans, Green and Co., page 14:

     …a defender of the Catholic priesthood from the charge of unstraightforwardness before such a jury as the British public was at a very heavy disadvantage….

   • 2010, Eric Csapo, Actors and Icons of the Ancient Theater, Wiley-Blackwell, →ISBN, page ix:

     …the very unstraightforwardness of the relationship between image and dramatic production greatly enhances the iconography’s value as a source of evidence for theater history. Selection and distortion have a great deal to tell us about the way ancient artists saw or liked to see or, better still, thought their customers liked to see drama….