AMIABILITY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does amiability mean? 

• AMIABILITY (noun)
  The noun AMIABILITY has 2 senses:

1. a cheerful and agreeable mood

2. a disposition to be friendly and approachable (easy to talk to)

  Familiarity information: AMIABILITY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• AMIABILITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A cheerful and agreeable mood

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

amiability; good humor; good humour; good temper

Hypernyms ("amiability" is a kind of...):

humor; humour; mood; temper (a characteristic (habitual or relatively temporary) state of feeling)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "amiability"):

jolliness; jollity; joviality (feeling jolly and jovial and full of good humor)

Derivation:

amiable (diffusing warmth and friendliness)

amiable (disposed to please)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A disposition to be friendly and approachable (easy to talk to)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

affability; affableness; amiability; amiableness; bonhomie; geniality

Hypernyms ("amiability" is a kind of...):

friendliness (a friendly disposition)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "amiability"):

condescendingness; condescension (affability to your inferiors and temporary disregard for differences of position or rank)

mellowness (geniality, as through the effects of alcohol or marijuana)

sweetness and light (a mild reasonableness)

Derivation:

amiable (diffusing warmth and friendliness)

amiable (disposed to please)

 Context examples 

She colored angrily, but took no other notice of that girlish sarcasm, and answered with unexpected amiability...

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

She was an interesting person, this stern Australian nurse—taciturn, suspicious, ungracious, it took some time before Holmes’s pleasant manner and frank acceptance of all that she said thawed her into a corresponding amiability.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Doctor Strong regarded him with a puzzled and doubting look, which almost immediately subsided into a smile that gave me great encouragement; for it was full of amiability and sweetness, and there was a simplicity in it, and indeed in his whole manner, when the studious, pondering frost upon it was got through, very attractive and hopeful to a young scholar like me.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)