soundness

[ sound-nis ]

noun

1. freedom from injury, damage, defect, disease, etc.; health or good condition:

   Homebuyers should engage a professional home inspector to check the property's safety and soundness.

2. the fact or quality of being financially strong, secure, or reliable:

   Over the next few months, more reports began to surface that put the soundness of his investments into question.

3. the fact or quality of being well-informed or well-founded, sensible, valid, etc.:

   My criticisms were about soundness of judgment, not about his intelligence or integrity.

4. (of sleep) the fact or quality of being uninterrupted and deep:

   Caffeine altered participants’ estimates of the time it took to fall asleep as well as the soundness of sleep.

5. freedom from moral weakness or defect:

   Integrity is soundness of character—being honest and reliable, and true to yourself in matters of conscience.

6. freedom from theological error:

   Persons are received into the assembly based on adequate testimony to their conversion, soundness of doctrine, and holiness of life.

7. the fact or quality of being vigorous, thorough, or severe:

   The 21–10 score does not accurately measure the soundness of the beating Ohio State administered to the Spartans.

Word History and Origins

Origin of soundness¹

sound ²( def ) + -ness ( def )

Example Sentences

Against all odds and ethical soundness, Sean is now Jimmy’s greatest success story in part because he moved into his pool house and redirected his rage into full-contact mixed martial arts classes.

From Salon

Elias admitted that he felt this way more because of his bedrock faith in the soundness of American democracy, and acknowledged he was not entirely certain this was true.

From Salon

She found that high-scoring essays shared features related more to the ability to express complex meaning, such as lexical diversity, noun modification, and soundness and number of arguments, than to structural complexity.

From Science Daily

Stockwell believed so strongly in the soundness of moderate drinking that he wrote, in a commentary in Australia’s premier medical journal in 2000, that skeptics on that subject might reasonably be lumped into the same category as “doubters of manned lunar missions and members of the Flat Earth Society.”

From New York Times

Washington, a proud “local control” state, places responsibility for fiscal soundness and student outcomes in the hands of its 295 school districts.

From Seattle Times

Related Words

• correctness
• durability
• integrity
• solidity
• solvency