"Aggressiveness."

Nope....no matter how I try, I cannot conceive of this as a legitimate word.  But it is, and my God I don't know who I am anymore...

I found - quite frankly to my surprise - that according to the OED it's existed since 1820, but first heard it on television several weeks ago, which is probably why my first inclination was to dismiss it as yet another one of those lazy pop-cultural hybrids that puts "-ness" or "-ion" at the end of any word they like (and once I remember what they are I'll post them!).  But I was wrong; this page on Grammarian demonstrates the difference between aggression and aggressiveness, with some interesting observations on North American English in contrast to British English.  Aggression is, well, more aggressive, referring to things like physical attacks; aggressiveness seems to be a more abstract reference to motivation or drive.

But when I hear people say "dude, what's with all the aggressiveness?" and realize they really are lazy and don't know or care about the distinction, I feel oddly vindicated.  I will forever dismiss aggressiveness in favour of talking about a spectrum of aggression or "aggressive nature of X."  Some things you just can't do and retain your integrity...