levity

Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

Contents 1 English 1.1 Etymology 1.2 Pronunciation 1.3 Noun 1.3.1 Translations 1.3.2 References

[edit] English

[edit] Etymology

Coined in 1564, from Latin levitas (“‘lightness, frivolity’”), from levis (“‘lightness (in weight)’”).^[1]

Cognate to lever.

[edit] Pronunciation

• (US) SAMPA:/"lE.vI.ti/

[edit] Noun

levity (usually uncountable; plural levities)

1. lightness of manner or speech, frivolity
2. (obsolete) lack of steadiness
3. The state or quality of being light, buoyancy
   • Robert Montgomery Bird:

     […] it would really seem as if there was something nomadic in our natures, a principle of levity and restlessness […]

4. A lighthearted or frivolous act
   • 1665, Daniel Defoe, History of the Plague in London^[1]:

     For though it be something wonderful to tell that any should have hearts so hardened, in the midst of such a calamity, as to rob and steal, yet certain it is that all sorts of villainies, and even levities and debaucheries, were then practiced in the town as openly as ever: I will not say quite as frequently, because the number of people were many ways lessened.

   • 1872, J. Fenimore Cooper, The Bravo^[2]:

     […] or do the people joy less than common in their levities?"

   • 1882, H.D. Traill, Sterne^[3]:

     His incorrigible levities had probably lost him the countenance of most of his more serious acquaintances […] .

[edit] Translations

[edit] References

• Notes:

1. ^ “levity” in the Online Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper, 2001