levity
Americannoun
-
levities
plural
-
lightness of mind, character, or behavior; lack of appropriate seriousness or earnestness.
- Synonyms:
- giddiness, triviality, flippancy, frivolity
-
an instance or exhibition of this.
- Synonyms:
- giddiness, triviality, flippancy, frivolity
-
lightness in weight.
noun
-
inappropriate lack of seriousness
-
fickleness or instability
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archaic lightness in weight
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of levity
1555–65; < Latin levitās lightness, frivolity, equivalent to levi ( s ) light + -tās -ty 2
Explanation
Joking that your dead grandmother "never looked better" could inject some levity, or frivolity, into her funeral, but your relatives might find your joke inappropriate to the occasion. Levity literally means "lightness," and it's often an attempt to inject some lightness or humor into an otherwise somber situation. Telling your Aunt Edna a joke while she recuperates from a skiing accident could provide the levity needed to brighten her mood. Yet levity is often used to describe humor that's not appropriate to the occasion, like telling jokes during a funeral.
Vocabulary lists containing levity
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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Grade 12, List 1
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The Hunger Games
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
She works as a healthcare clown for Boston Children’s Hospital on the side and continues to live by the clowning code: be open-minded and take life with a spoonful of levity.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 26, 2026
The crowd was sullen, and the only levity came from my boys, 2 and 3, running up and down the hall, hiding and entertaining themselves with a wheelchair.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 28, 2026
In our dire age, a little bit of levity can often feel like a wager, staking your bets on an audience’s bandwidth for fun.
From Salon ● Jun. 10, 2026
“And when we needed a moment of levity, Glenn was not afraid to come forward and put a smile on people’s face.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 7, 2026
Beowulf scanned the hall for signs of levity.
From "The Interrupted Tale" by Maryrose Wood
Grave, haughty and taciturn, Bourbon was but ill suited to the levities of the court, and his vast wealth and influence kindled in the king a feeling of resentment, if not of fear.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Slice 3 "Borgia, Lucrezia" to "Bradford, John" by Various
As the learned Grotius said of his own life, he consumed it in levities and strenuous inanities.
From Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky A Sketch by David Wendel Yandell
Shall I delight him by memories of home and of long ago, or shall I shock him by the little levities of foreign manner?
From The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. II by Charles James Lever
Here and there are apt indications of his proneness to those vicious levities and debasing luxuries which afterwards ripened into such a gigantic profligacy.
From The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Cæsar by Ebenezer Charlton Black
Besides all this, the untravelled Englishman—and such was Glencore when he married—never can be brought to understand the harmless levities of foreign life.
From The Fortunes Of Glencore by Charles James Lever
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
