levity
English
Etymology
Coined in 1564, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin levitās (“lightness, frivolity”), from levis (“lightness (in weight)”).[1] Cognate to lever, and more distantly, light.
Pronunciation
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Noun
levity (usually uncountable, plural levities)
- Lightness of manner or speech, frivolity; lack of appropriate seriousness; inclination to make a joke of serious matters.
- (obsolete) Lack of steadiness.
- The state or quality of being light, buoyancy.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Most of the confidences were unsought - frequently I had feigned sleep, preoccupation or a hostile levity […]
- Robert Montgomery Bird:
- […] it would really seem as if there was something nomadic in our natures, a principle of levity and restlessness […]
- 1869, Mary Somerville, On Molecular and Microscopic Science 1.1.12:
- Hydrogen […] rises in the air on account of its levity.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- (countable) 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 […] .
Antonyms
Derived terms
Translations
lightness of manner or speech
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lack of steadiness — see instability
state or quality of being light
lighthearted or frivolous act
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References
- ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “levity”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.