What is Quiddity or What Quiddity Is.

The Intellectual Pineapple has an interesting vocabulary, observed Pliny the Elder. What do you think he means by the word 'quiddity'?

You should know, I said. Doesn't it come from the Latin 'quidditas', meaning essence?

I don't think so, said Pliny. I don't remember a word like that. It must be one of those new-fangled pseudo-philosophical medieval scholastic coinages.

That makes sense, I agreed. I wondered why it wasn't in the Latin dictionary. But 'quid' means 'what', right?

Right, said Pliny.

So 'quiddity' means 'whatness', obviously.

But what is the whatness of anything? asked Pliny.

It's the quality or qualities without which it wouldn't be itself, I said.

I don't hold with that sort of thing, said Pliny.

You never did think much of the Greeks did you, Pliny. Listen, take a simple example like a table. What are the things which constitute its essence, would you say?

A flat top, said Pliny, and four legs.

I agree about the flat top, I said, but it might have more or less legs.

Alright said Pliny. A flat top, and any number of legs between three and infinity.

Two and infinity.

A table with only two legs would fall over, said Pliny. It wouldn't constitute a proper table.

You are wrong, Pliny. I said. I have seen a table with only two legs. Not only that but the legs were both at the same end. At the other end there was a cross-piece with two semicircles cut out of it and these were placed over your legs when you sat in your chair.

Galloping Jupiter! said Pliny. There is no quiddity in such a table. No whatness that makes it a table. If I were to coin a word for such a singular table it would be 'haecceity', or 'thisness'.

Too late Pliny, That pseudo-philosophical medieval scholar Duns Scotus has beaten you to it.

Pliny's eyebrows shot up like two semicircles in the cross-piece of a haecceitous table.