levity

English

Etymology

Coined in 1564, from Latin levitās (“lightness, frivolity”), from levis (“lightness (in weight)”). Cognate to lever, and more distantly, light.

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˈlɛ.vɪ.ti/

• Audio (Southern England)

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Noun

levity (usually uncountable, plural levities)

1. Lightness of manner or speech, frivolity; lack of appropriate seriousness; inclination to make a joke of serious matters.
2. (obsolete) Lack of steadiness.
3. The state or quality of being light, buoyancy.
   • 1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN, →OCLC:

     Most of the confidences were unsought - frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation or a hostile levity […]

   • 1838, Robert Montgomery Bird, Peter Pilgrim:

     […] 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.

4. (countable) A lighthearted or frivolous act.
   • 1665, Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year‎, Gutenberg:

     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:

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

   • 1882, H.D. Traill, Sterne‎:

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

Antonyms

• gravity

Derived terms

• levitous

Translations

References