The quality, state, or essence of being English; the distinctive characteristics, traditions, and values associated with English people and culture.
From English + -ness (Old English -nis, expressing quality or state). This is one of the most productive suffixes in English for creating abstract nouns from adjectives.
Englishness is obsessively studied by scholars and constantly debated by English people themselves—tea, politeness, queuing, understatement, and rain all get cited as quintessentially English. It's a perfect example of how nations construct imaginary cultural identities.
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