backwardness

Other forms of backwardness

plural

backwardnesses·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about backwardness

What does backwardness mean?

backwardness means "lack of normal development of intellectual capacities".

How many syllables are in backwardness?

backwardness has 3 syllables: bac-kward-ness. The stress falls on "bac". In IPA it is /ˈbækwɚdnəs/.

What is another word for backwardness?

Close synonyms include retardation, mental retardation, slowness, subnormality. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is backwardness a common word?

backwardness is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.