indifferency

English

Etymology

From Latin indifferentia.

Noun

indifferency (usually uncountable, plural indifferencies)

1. (obsolete) Impartiality, fairness, disinterestedness.
   • 1628, Samuel Ward, A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale:

     Doe we thinke he will ever digest us, in the temper wee are in? which (to confesse the truth of the fashionable Christian) what is it but a state of neutrality, indifferency, or such a mediocrity, as will just serve the time, satisfie Law, or stand with reputation of neighbours?

2. (obsolete) A lack of strong feeling; indifference.
   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 29, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:

     he was sometimes found in his house, bitterly scolding with his sister, for which being reproved, as he that wronged his indifferencie: What? said he; must this seely woman also serve as a witnesse to my rules?

   • 1722, Daniel Defoe, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c.:

     I carried it on as far as this with a sort of indifferency that he often wondered at, more than at first, but which was the only support of his courtship; and I mention it the rather to intimate again to the ladies that nothing but want of courage for such an indifferency makes our sex so cheap, and prepares them to be ill-used as they are; would they venture the loss of a pretending fop now and then, who carries it high upon the point of his own merit, they would certainly be less slighted, and courted more.

   • 1851, Thomas Carlyle, The Life of John Sterling:

     For example, one sceptical figure praised the Church of England, in Hume's phrase, "as a Church tending to keep down fanaticism," and recommendable for its very indifferency; whereupon a transcendental figure urges him: "You are afraid of the horse's kicking: but will you sacrifice all qualities to being safe from that?