levity

English
WOTD – 23 July 2012

Etymology

Coined in 1564, from Latin levitās (“lightness, frivolity”), from levis (“lightness (in weight)”).[1] Cognate to lever, and more distantly, light.

Pronunciation
  • (UK, US) IPA(key): /ˈlɛ.vɪ.ti/

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.
    • 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.
  4. (countable) A lighthearted or frivolous act.
    • 1665, Daniel Defoe, History of the Plague in London‎:
      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
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Derived terms

Translations
lack of steadiness — see instability

References
  1. “levity” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.
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