felicity
See also: Felicity
English
Etymology
Borrowed from Old French felicité, from Latin fēlīcitās (“fertility, fruitfulness; happiness, felicity; good fortune; success”), from fēlix (“happy; blessed, fortunate, lucky; fertile, fruitful; prosperous; auspicious, favourable”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁(y)- (“to nurse, suckle”).[1]
Noun
felicity (countable and uncountable, plural felicities)
- (uncountable) Happiness.
- Antonym: infelicity
- 1814 July, [Jane Austen], chapter I, in Mansfield Park: A Novel. In Three Volumes, volume I, London: Printed for T[homas] Egerton, […], OCLC 39810224, page 2:
- […] Mr. and Mrs. Norris began their career of conjugal felicity with very little less than a thousand a year.
- 1862, George Long, translation of Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book V:
- For two reasons then it is right to be content with that which happens to thee; the one, because it was done for thee and prescribed for thee, and in a manner had reference to thee, originally from the most ancient causes spun with thy destiny; and the other, because even that which comes severally to every man is to the power which administers the universe a cause of felicity and perfection, nay even of its very continuance.
- (uncountable) An apt and pleasing style in speech, writing, etc.
- (uncountable, semiotics, semiology) Reproduction of a sign with fidelity.
- The quotation was rendered with felicity.
- (countable) Something that is either a source of happiness or particularly apt.
- 2007 August 7, Joshua Ferris, “Table for two”, in The New York Times:
- The season’s main attraction, the felicities of the sun, dimmed in the light of our competition and our growing friendliness.
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Derived terms
Translations
happiness — see happiness
apt and pleasing style in speech, writing, etc.
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
References
- “felicity, n.”, in OED Online
, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1895; “felicity” in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press.
Further reading
felicity (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
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