quiddity

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The essence or inherent nature of a person or thing.

   “A tub of butter, contemplated by him, amounts to a Platonic idea. He understands a leg of mutton in its quiddity. He stands wondering, amid the commonplace materials of life, like primæval man, with the sun and stars about him.”

   “My vision reeked with truth. It had the tone, The quiddity and quaintness of its own Reality.”

   “He represented my quiddity I suppose – the part which, thanks to you, has converted a black pessimism about life into a belief in cosmic absurdity.”

   “When I send a card, it has to be right. Something that sums up the essential quiddity of being me, right here, right now.”

2. (countable, uncountable)A trifle; a nicety or quibble.
3. (countable, uncountable)An eccentricity; an odd feature.

   “They have ſwallowed and digeſted all the Fathers, the Codes, Provincials, Decretals, Pandects, Councils, Canons ; are Maſters of all the Schoolmen, not to fill their Heads and ſtuff their Writings with Quiddities and Quoddities, and far-fetched unintelligible Diſtinctions, but to be able to reaſon cloſely, to argue ſolidly, to rebuke, to confute, to reply, to rejoind, to ſyllogize, to criticize, to apologize, to advertize, to ſermonize, to decypherize, to――”