LEVITY

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does levity mean? 

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

1. feeling an inappropriate lack of seriousness

2. a manner lacking seriousness

  Familiarity information: LEVITY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LEVITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Feeling an inappropriate lack of seriousness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

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

feeling (the experiencing of affective and emotional states)

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

gaiety; playfulness (a festive merry feeling)

Antonym:

gravity (a solemn and dignified feeling)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A manner lacking seriousness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

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

frivolity; frivolousness (the trait of being frivolous; not serious or sensible)

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

flippancy; light-mindedness (inappropriate levity)

humorousness; jocoseness; jocosity; merriness (the trait of merry joking)

 Context examples 

She could not endure the idea of treachery or levity, or anything akin to ill usage between him and his friend.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

The hunters piled pell-mell out of the steerage, but as Leach’s tirade continued I saw that there was no levity in their faces.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

I need not say that any publicity given to such an idea—any levity in your narrative of what occurred—would be exceedingly offensive to me.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Edmund had already gone through the service once since his ordination; and upon this being understood, he had a variety of questions from Crawford as to his feelings and success; questions, which being made, though with the vivacity of friendly interest and quick taste, without any touch of that spirit of banter or air of levity which Edmund knew to be most offensive to Fanny, he had true pleasure in satisfying; and when Crawford proceeded to ask his opinion and give his own as to the properest manner in which particular passages in the service should be delivered, shewing it to be a subject on which he had thought before, and thought with judgment, Edmund was still more and more pleased.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Supposing even that they had never become intimate friends; that she had never been admitted into Miss Fairfax's confidence on this important matter—which was most probable—still, in knowing her as she ought, and as she might, she must have been preserved from the abominable suspicions of an improper attachment to Mr. Dixon, which she had not only so foolishly fashioned and harboured herself, but had so unpardonably imparted; an idea which she greatly feared had been made a subject of material distress to the delicacy of Jane's feelings, by the levity or carelessness of Frank Churchill's.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

His voice sounded harsh. There was no levity in it.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

I gave the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man, upon which he jumped from his chair, reproved me for my habitual levity, which made it impossible for him to discuss any reasonable subject in my presence, and bounced off out of the room to dress for a Masonic meeting.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon—for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)