Deediness

These men, to the number of eighteen or twenty, were not only entirely ignorant of the word "geology," but testified their rustic wonderment that I should spend my time in looking on so eagerly as they drove their wedges into the stony layers, and should watch with such “deediness," as they called it, each fracture they made in the ponderous masses around them.

Officer Captain Paul Waggett was preoccupied with the little problems of organization and equipment and correspondence that during the Second World War kept company commanders of the Home Guard in a condition of patriotic deediness […]

On January 20th, the Chiefs of Staff in London, with the grim and desperate deediness of a man who has suddenly woken up after oversleeping himself, brought to the notice of Malaya Command points of importance that would require attention if the troops on the mainland should be forced to withdraw to the island.

Tiresome, noisy and unruly they could most certainly be but delightful in their “deediness” and enthusiasm.

What seems to have tipped the balance was class, “deediness,” and the clout, not least political, behind the successful.

Occasionally her pretty arm would be waved with the rest of the eager crowd, but it was a gay gesture of jingling bracelets free from smugness or deediness .

I wished I had a clear, cold mind that could cut through cant and deediness to truth.

the Corgi shares an inimitable "deediness” with the man who believes that everybody else needs scrutiny and advice