SUAVITY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does suavity mean? 

• SUAVITY (noun)
  The noun SUAVITY has 1 sense:

1. the quality of being bland and gracious or ingratiating in manner

  Familiarity information: SUAVITY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SUAVITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The quality of being bland and gracious or ingratiating in manner

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

blandness; smoothness; suaveness; suavity

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

graciousness (excellence of manners or social conduct)

Derivation:

suave (smoothly agreeable and courteous with a degree of sophistication)

 Context examples 

The violent and causeless excitement, followed by this brutality of speech, so far removed from his usual suavity, showed me how deep was the disorganisation of his mind.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I attended to all the ghastly formalities, and the urbane undertaker proved that his staff were afflicted—or blessed—with something of his own obsequious suavity.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Fervently hoping that he would get out before she did, Amy utterly ignored the basket at her feet, and congratulating herself that she had on her new traveling dress, returned the young man's greeting with her usual suavity and spirit.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

She must learn to feel that she had been mistaken with regard to both; that she had been unfairly influenced by appearances in each; that because Captain Wentworth's manners had not suited her own ideas, she had been too quick in suspecting them to indicate a character of dangerous impetuosity; and that because Mr Elliot's manners had precisely pleased her in their propriety and correctness, their general politeness and suavity, she had been too quick in receiving them as the certain result of the most correct opinions and well-regulated mind.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)