thankfulness

• thankefulnesse (obsolete)

thankful +‎ -ness

thankfulness (usually uncountable, plural thankfulnesses)

1. The state of being thankful.
   • 1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC, page 153:

     All our Diſcontents about what we want, appeared to me, to ſpring from the want of Thankfulneſs for what we have.

   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, page 46:

     No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or […] . And at last I began to realize in my harassed soul that all elusion was futile, and to take such holidays as I could get, when he was off with a girl, in a spirit of thankfulness.

   • 1941 October, “Railway Literature”, in Railway Magazine, page 480:

     King's Messenger, 1918-1940: Memoirs of a Silver Greyhound. By George P. Antrobus, O.B.E., King's Foreign Service Messenger 1918-1940. London: Herbert Jenkins Ltd. Price 10s. 6d. net. [...] There is cause for thankfulness that he had just completed this book before he died, for it is a worthy memorial.

• (state of being thankful): appreciation, gratefulness, gratitude