cleverality

English

Etymology

Formed irregularly as clever +‎ -ality on the pattern of comicality and other such terms.

Pronunciation

• enPR: klĕvərăʹlĭtĭ, IPA^(key): /klɛvəˈɹælɪtɪ/

Noun

cleverality (uncountable)

1. (formerly Scotland, now chiefly Ireland) cleverness
   • 1803, Ignatius Sancho with Joseph Jekyll, Letters of the late Ignatius Sancho, an African, page 140:

     I protest, it is to me the most difficult of things to write to one of your female - geniuses — there is a certain degree of cleverality (if I may so call it), an easy kind of derangement of periods, a gentleman-like — fashionable - careless — see-saw of dialogue — which I know no more of than you do of cruelty.

   • 1868, David Macbeth Moir, The life of Mansie Wauch: tailor in Dalkeith:

     But the time wearing late, and Tammie Bodkin having brought ben the shop-key, after putting on the window-shutters, Nanse and I, out of goodfellowship, thought we could not do less than ask the honest man, whose cleverality had diverted us so much, to sit still and take a chack of supper;

   • 1975 April 10, Doris Eyges, “Beware of being too clever”, in The Christian Science Monitor, page 31:

     "That," said Professor Denis Donoghue, "is what in Ireland is called 'cleverality.'" We had been talking of a contemporary American poet whom I admired for ironic and dazzling wit.

   • 2003 December 7, “The chips are down for Bertie's kebabs - Analysis, Opinion ...”, in Irish Independent:

     The cleverality did not end there as McCreevy decided to borrow some of the old clothes from Tony Blair's spin machine

References

• “cleveˈrality” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2nd Ed.; 1989]
• “cleverality”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.