single-heartedness

single-heartedness

See also: singleheartedness

English

Alternative forms

• singleheartedness

Etymology

single-hearted +‎ -ness

Noun

single-heartedness (uncountable)

1. Devotion; commitment and lack of distraction or ambivalence.
   • 2008, Jana Marguerite Bennett, Water Is Thicker than Blood : An Augustinian Theology of Marriage and Singleness, →ISBN, page 110:

     Just as Augustine notes that a true virgin must be a virgin physically and spiritually, so too a monk's single-heartedness of purpose in Christ cannot be left to an ethereal realm.

2. Straightforwardness; lack of duplicity.
   • 1825, Theodore Edward Hook, “The Sutherlands”, in Sayings and Doings: Or, Sketches from Life, volume 1, number 2, page 27:

     ...the result of which congress was an unanimous declaration of their forgiveness of a piece of thoughtless levity on the part of the giddy girl ; and every allowance being pleaded for her single-heartedness and ingenuousness, it was determined that no allusion whatever should again be made to the disagreeable subject;