faintness

Etymology

From Middle English faintnesse, feintnesse, equivalent to faint + -ness.

noun

1. The property of being or feeling faint.
   The confusion, in which impressions are sometimes involved, proceeds only from their faintness and unsteadiness, not from any capacity in the mind to receive any impression, which in its real existence has no particular degree nor proportion. 1738, David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Section 7
   The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. 1859, Charles Dickens, chapter 6, in A Tale of Two Cities