quiddity
noun

- the inherent nature or essence of someone or something

- the quality or fact of being a particular thing; the real nature or essence of a thing

- the basic quality or charcteristic that makes something what it is

Merriam-Webster, Oxford English Dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

"Quiddity" entered English in the late 14th century from Medieval Latin quidditas ("whatness"), coined by William of Ockham around 1320 to translate Aristotle's to ti ēn einai ("the what it was to be").

The Latin term breaks down as quid ("what") + -itas (suffix for abstract nouns).

Scholastic philosophers used it to debate substance versus accidents—what makes a horse a horse, not its colour or speed.

By the 16th century, it shifted from theology to everyday use; Shakespeare played with it in Hamlet (1601): "the quiddities... of the law." The word fell out of favour in the 18th century but revived in 20th-century literary criticism. 

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WHAT MAKES A THING ITSELF?

Drops of rain land on your window, and for a split second, you wonder: what makes this "rain" and not just falling water? That question gets at quiddity—the essential whatness of a thing.

Lawyers wrestle with it constantly. When the Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that corporations have free speech rights, they were deciding the quiddity of corporate personhood. Can a legal entity have opinions like a human? The justices said yes, but the complicated debate reveals how elusive essence can be.

Product designers chase it too. Apple's competitors flooded the market with foldable phones, but early models flopped because users couldn't grasp their quiddity—why fold when flat works fine? Sales only improved when marketing clarified the core purpose: "bend to focus, unfold to share."

Even children probe quiddity instinctively. When a four-year-old asks "why is blue blue?" she's not asking about wavelengths—she's grasping for the irreducible essence that makes blue itself.

Understanding quiddity sharpens decision-making. Managers hiring for "culture fit" fail unless they can name their team's quiddity: is blunt feedback preferred to harmony? Speed to perfection? Without identifying the essence, they're just hiring the people they like.

Back to those raindrops: their quiddity isn't the water, the falling, or even the wetness. It's the complete experience—the pitter-patter rhythm, the gray sky, the way it makes you pause at the window. Strip away any element and you might have precipitation, but you don't have rain. Quiddity is what remains when you can subtract nothing more.

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

at the heart of it, being, boil down to, centre, character, core, crux, distinction, distinctiveness, down to the bone, down to brass tacks, eccentricity, essence, flavour, gist, heart, hypostasis, identity, idiosyncrasy, in a nutshell, individuality, inwardness, kernel, long and short, mark, mannerism, marrow, meat, nature, nicety, nitty-gritty, nub, oddity, particularity, peculiarity, pith, quibble, QUIDDITY, real McCoy, selfhood, sine qua non, singularity, soul, specialness, spice, spirit, stamp, strange­ness, substance, suchness, sum, tang, the be-all and end-all, the bottom line, the crux of it, the heart of the matter, the long and short, the meat of it, the name of the game, uniqueness, what makes it tick, whatness

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SMUGGLE
 OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

 “Gertude Stein famously said ‘A rose is a rose is a rose’ … essentially saying its QUIDDITY needs no proof."  

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P L E A S E   S U P P O R T   O W A D