Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of profundity
1375–1425; late Middle English profundite < Late Latin profunditās. See profound, -ity
Explanation
Profundity describes being thoughtful, deep, and wise. Your profundity might inspire friends to come to you for advice. Profundity comes from the word profound and it means a quality of depth or wisdom that is meaningful or even transformational. The profundity of a piece of music might move you to tears, and the profundity of certain philosophies can be deep — and a bit confusing. Profundity can describe something that's intense, like the profundity of the silence in the room following the announcement of bad news.
Vocabulary lists containing profundity
"Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963)
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30 GRE Words Beginning with "P"
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Excerpt from "Letter from Birmingham Jail"
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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:
And while Andy, Miranda, Nigel and Emily are written and performed with as much profundity as they are in the first film, each of their arcs feels like a progression, rather than simple repetition.
From Salon ● May 1, 2026
In “Walden,” he found constant wonder in the obvious; in “Civil Disobedience,” he mined moral profundity out of common sense.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 26, 2026
Part of the beauty and profundity of people’s psychedelic experiences is the ineffable—but the systems that run on Western science are hungry for hard data, replicable and reliable outcomes, and, perhaps most importantly, profit.
From Slate ● Jan. 30, 2026
She thanked critics for celebrating "this genre of horror films, that are overlooked and not seen for the profundity that they can hold".
From BBC ● Feb. 8, 2025
He rocked back and forth on his heavy heels, his face wise with profundity.
From "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick
For those, to put it more generously, pulled in by the simple pleasures and crystalline profundities of the text.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026
Bankman-Fried exploited the vacuity of crypto as an asset by slathering it over with what sounded like profundities but were vacuous at their core.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 3, 2023
And there’s a high risk of sentimentality here: the precious Messiah child mewing his little Whitmanesque profundities at us about the unity of all life.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 21, 2021
But “Ad Astra” is more concerned with its protagonist’s inner life than the magnificent starscape outside his spacecraft, and long stretches pass with only Pitt onscreen, his voice-over pondering life’s profundities.
From New York Times ● Sep. 4, 2019
His cosmogony, his manner of tracing, a priori, the development of all things from the absolute, was considered, by those who understand such profundities, to be deficient in accuracy.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 by Various
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