gayness

noun

1. (dated, rare, uncountable, usually)The state of being gay (colorful or festive); display or dressiness.

   “And truly, at a short butt, which some men doth use, the peacock feather doth seldom keep up the shaft either right or level, it is so rough and heavy ; so that many men, which have taken them up for gayness, hath laid them down again for profit:”

   “Let me ſpeak prowdly: Tell the Conſtable, ⁠/ We are but Warriors for the working-day: / Our Gayneſſe and our Gilt are all beſmyrcht / With raynie Marching in the painefull field.”

2. (countable, dated, rare, usually)The state of being gay (cheerful); gaiety.
3. (uncountable, usually)The state of being gay (homosexual); homosexuality; demeanor stereotypically representative of it.

   “You cannot blame their gayness, their queerness, their homosexuality on sudden wealth.”

   “Tell Al Sublette I met a great new pianist called Cecil Taylor, [he] plays like [Oscar] Peterson gone Classical, fast runs but Brubeck-Stravinsky-Prokofieff chords, a Juilliard classicist—He, like [James] Baldwin, [is] colored, [and] I think gay,—Baldwin is gay. I don’t dig all this gayness.”

   “I doubt very much that their "gay­ness" had any deep sexual roots. I think it was simply an exotic form of juvenile delinquency.”

   “Those of us who have been in heterosexual marriages too often have blamed our gayness on the breakup of the marriage.”

   “Were there gay people in the ancient world, or is gayness a uniquely modern category?”