That controversy has now been laid to rest. The suffix ‘-ness’ denotes quality, or the state of something. For example, goodness means the state of being good. When people say ‘My goodness ...

Yee from Hong Kong writes: I'm not sure how the suffix -ness works. Can we add -ness to all types of words to make nouns? Thanks for your answer. -ness is one of a number of noun suffixes.