toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

levity
in a sentence

show 122 more with this conextual meaning
  • All levity ceased.†   (source)
  • The second of levity passed, and everyone was still.†   (source)
  • They both laughed, which made Mark wonder where all the sudden levity had come from.†   (source)
  • Jorge, too, provided some moments of levity.†   (source)
  • A moment of lighthearted levity from Ringer the warrior queen!†   (source)
  • "All of you women do so much for us here," he says, grinning coyly, telegraphing some levity, "that I'd take you all out for dinner if I could.†   (source)
  • How can you live without seeing Palermo? asked Franz in an attempt at levity.†   (source)
  • "She doesn't have it yet," Jake said, enjoying the levity.†   (source)
  • There was no levity in his voice.†   (source)
  • John saw no reason for levity and squared his shoulders, sobering the entire staff.†   (source)
  • What must he say of his own vanity and levity?†   (source)
  • Logic seemed to infer it was the latter, yet it nonetheless pained me to realize that her levity would be gone the moment she hung up the phone.†   (source)
  • It's perfectly outrageous to treat your public responsibilities with such thoughtless levity!†   (source)
  • Several members of the court snickered at this but were silenced by an icy glance from Gauldin, who allowed no levity in his court.†   (source)
  • "Don't ever touch that stuff again," he says without levity.†   (source)
  • And Raphael, never tiring of angels and infants, painted miracles because his painting was in itself a miracle, and so text followed subject with the levity and grace of the wind.†   (source)
  • Her testimony provided a brief moment of levity in an otherwise deadly serious trial.†   (source)
  • Zooey turned and looked at her, and—unpredictable young man—made a very dour face, as though he had suddenly eschewed any and all forms of levity.†   (source)
  • "Not a time for levity, Nathan," Tyler said.†   (source)
  • Levity was not looked upon with favor anywhere in those austere offices, as I discovered for myself while attending a conference concerning my first assignment.†   (source)
  • "Chief guide, high medical officer, and head bottle washer," he said, with rehearsed levity.†   (source)
  • BRADY:  (Piously) I object to the note of levity which the counsel for the defense is introducing into these proceedings.†   (source)
  • No doubt I contributed my share, for there is something in me, some nervous reaction, that is stirred to levity by the deeply serious or the dangerous.†   (source)
  • I don't think it's a time for levity, Joel.†   (source)
  • He smiled in the instant before he knelt down at his thronelike chair to pray; and thought again, as he had been thinking for eleven nights, that there was about his elders an ease in the holy place, and a levity, that made his soul uneasy.†   (source)
  • A yearning for levity took hold of the little drudge, he tipped his hat and bowed like a Southerner, to the fish eggs.†   (source)
  • Frowns at this levity.   (source)
  • Again he pressed the hand of the latter with an expression of good-natured, sincere, and animated levity.   (source)
  • There was no levity in his voice when he answered:   (source)
  • Take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then say it with the utmost levity.   (source)
  • Mae said, laughing again, trying to bring the discussion back to a place of levity.†   (source)
  • —Maybe we're just first, Alan said, trying to maintain some levity.†   (source)
  • The nanny looks slightly disturbed at this levity, given the disappearance.†   (source)
  • Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past — the past of others, loaded onto their shoulders.†   (source)
  • But then she tried to add some perspective and levity to it, and to ensure that this revelation wouldn't dissuade others from exploring their personal history through PastPerfect.†   (source)
  • He was more alarming to me during his moments of levity than he was the rest of the time; it was like watching a lizard gambol.†   (source)
  • And yet on sighting him, on seeing him holding her so, I felt a certain sadness for him, the humane sorrow one has when one witnesses the briefest moment of another's abandon and self-loss, which is a levity, and a phantom death, and enviable enough.†   (source)
  • Everyone at the table roared, but Gabriel felt his blood turn cold that God's ministers should be guilty of such abominable levity, and that that woman sent by God to comfort him, and without whose support he might readily have fallen by the wayside, should be held in such dishonor.†   (source)
  • …as if she meant that Mary was much too thirsty to wait out any more of it; and Joel gave a snort of amusement and then was caught into the contagion of this somewhat hysterical laughter, and they all roared, laughing their heads off, while Catherine sat there watching them, disapproving such levity at such a time, and unhappily suspecting that for some reason they were laughing at her; but in courtesy and reproof, and an expectation of hearing the joke, smiling and lifting her trumpet.†   (source)
  • There was a great crowd outside and while this was going on inside with the priest, there was some levity outside and shouting of obscenities, but most of the people were very serious and respectful.†   (source)
  • Farewell, my Lord, I do not wait upon ceremony, I leave as I came, forgetting all acrimony, Hoping that your present gravity Will find excuse for my humble levity.†   (source)
  • That you're not going to be Governor," she said, with a dash of easy levity, but she flashed me a look, the only S O S, I suppose, Sadie Burke ever sent out to anybody.†   (source)
  • This was the note upon which Byron's calls usually opened: this faintly overbearing note of levity and warmth to put the other at his ease, and on the part of the caller that slow and countrybred diffidence which is courtesy.†   (source)
  • It was born (if from any source) of that incorrigible unsentimental sentimentality of the young which takes the form of hard and often crass levity—to which, by the way, Quentin paid no attention whatever, resuming as if he had never been interrupted, his face still lowered, still brooding apparently on the open letter upon the open book between his hands.†   (source)
  • It too was just that protective coloring of levity behind which the youthful shame of being moved hid itself, out of which Quentin also spoke, the reason for Quentin's sullen bemusement, the (on both their parts) flipness, the strained clowning: the two of them, whether they knew it or not, in the cold room (it was quite cold now) dedicated to that best of ratiocination which after all was a good deal like Sutpen's morality and Miss Cold-field's demonising—this room not only dedicated…†   (source)
  • A handful of men (he was not an officer: I think that was the only point on which father and old Cinthy were ever in accord: that grandfather wore no sword, galloped with no sword waving in front of the rest of them) performing with the grim levity of schoolboys a prank so foolhardy that the troops who had opposed them for four years did not believe' that even they would have attempted it.†   (source)
  • You see, my Lord, I do not wait upon ceremony: Here I have come, forgetting all acrimony, Hoping that your present gravity Will find excuse for my humble levity Remembering all the good time past.†   (source)
  • BARBARA [angered by his levity] Take care, Dolly, take care.†   (source)
  • His levity disappeared, and the red wrinkles narrowed round his searching eyes.†   (source)
  • Miriam glanced at the two, and avoided their levity.†   (source)
  • "Robinson Crusoe had no more," said Milly to herself, and then stood aghast at her levity.†   (source)
  • "Izz—please, please forget my momentary levity!" he cried.†   (source)
  • Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of.†   (source)
  • The mother, you know, had always that levity about her, which makes me anxious for the children.†   (source)
  • 'I believe the dead are at peace: but it is not right to speak of them with levity.'†   (source)
  • Front-de-Boeuf would have replied, but Prince John's petulance and levity got the start.†   (source)
  • This was said equally without levity and without any very deep feeling.†   (source)
  • Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man.†   (source)
  • Is it a glowing eulogy or an accusation of levity?†   (source)
  • But levity Is causal too, and makes the sum of weight.†   (source)
  • There were the same two-story brick groceries with lodge-signs above the awnings; the same one-story wooden millinery shop; the same fire-brick garages; the same prairie at the open end of the wide street; the same people wondering whether the levity of eating a hot-dog sandwich would break their taboos.†   (source)
  • There was no levity in it.†   (source)
  • "Milly, you ain't actin' much like a boy, spite them boy's clothes," said Jett, with attempt at levity.†   (source)
  • Simply mentioning such things causes our own expression to change, and we notice that, although thus far we may have spoken of such questionable liaisons in a light and jocular tone, we did it for the same mysterious reasons people usually speak of them in that fashion—not that it in any way proves the subject to be a matter of levity and jest.†   (source)
  • Your levities and audacities are like the loves and comforts prayed for by Desdemona: they increase, even as your days do grow.†   (source)
  • An indulgent smile might have been expected at this point, but so antagonistic and bitter was the general public toward Clyde that such levity was out of the question in this courtroom.†   (source)
  • The levity of some of the younger women in and about Trantridge was marked, and was perhaps symptomatic of the choice spirit who ruled The Slopes in that vicinity.†   (source)
  • Lassiter spoke with slow, cool, soothing voice, in which there was a hint of levity, and his touch, as he continued to bathe her brow, was gentle and steady.†   (source)
  • 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.†   (source)
  • The levity with which you assumed this frightful responsibility has probably by this time enabled you to forget it; but the day of reckoning has arrived: here is your play!†   (source)
  • 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.†   (source)
  • But now—and it was unclear whether he hoped to cloak this outburst of levity with common sense and reason, or whether he had something else in mind—quite out of the blue, the consul picked up on a topic one might hear at a men's club, and with the swollen veins pulsing at his temples, began to talk about a so-called chansonette whom he had heard singing in a cafe, a quite incredible young thing, who was currently appearing in Sankt Pauli and whose fiery charms, which he described in…†   (source)
  • O, it was no levity to me!†   (source)
  • Very orderly and methodical he looked, with a hand on each knee, and a loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon under his flapped waist-coat, as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the brisk fire.†   (source)
  • The girl drew closer to the table, and glancing at Monks with an air of careless levity, withdrew her eyes; but as he turned towards Fagin, she stole another look; so keen and searching, and full of purpose, that if there had been any bystander to observe the change, he could hardly have believed the two looks to have proceeded from the same person.†   (source)
  • Mabel thought there were mockery and levity in this appeal, and its manner rather fortified than weakened her resolution to hold the place as long as possible.†   (source)
  • It was not thought of as an unbecoming levity for the old and middle-aged people to dance a little before sitting down to cards, but rather as part of their social duties.†   (source)
  • …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.†   (source)
  • She could not endure the idea of treachery or levity, or anything akin to ill usage between him and his friend.†   (source)
  • She had no business to be so friendly to a young man of whom their brother thought so meanly, and Mrs. Almond was surprised at her levity in foisting a most deplorable engagement upon Catherine.†   (source)
  • Bathsheba would have submitted to an indignant chastisement for her levity had Gabriel protested that he was loving her at the same time; the impetuosity of passion unrequited is bearable, even if it stings and anathematizes—there is a triumph in the humiliation, and a tenderness in the strife.†   (source)
  • There was no levity in his voice when he answered: "Yes, Mother, I know, now, that I am reformed—and permanently."†   (source)
  • [The word 'affaire' has not yet, in France, that levity of import which it conveys with us,] "but nothing whatever has transpired to throw light upon it.†   (source)
  • He had, in spite of his levity, and without its interfering in any way with his dignity, a certain manner about him which was imposing, dignified, honest, and lofty, in a bourgeois fashion; and his great age added to it.†   (source)
  • During the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this family tree, the house of Smallweed, always early to go out and late to marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books, fairytales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities whatsoever.†   (source)
  • The vortex of thoughtless folly into which I there so immediately and so recklessly plunged, washed away all but the froth of my past hours, engulfed at once every solid or serious impression, and left to memory only the veriest levities of a former existence.†   (source)
  • On this latter point he felt almost certain, knowing her freedom from levity of character, and the extreme simplicity of her intellect.†   (source)
  • …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…†   (source)
  • 'Fanny,' returned Mr Dorrit, with a grave and weighty slowness upon him, contrasting strongly with his daughter's levity: 'I beg the favour of your explaining—ha—what it is you mean.'†   (source)
  • Soon after this M. de Bellegarde, in punishment for his levity, received a stern poke in the back from a pointed instrument.†   (source)
  • Again he pressed the hand of the latter with an expression of good-natured, sincere, and animated levity.†   (source)
  • "Such immediate expectation of something extraordinary," he said, "shows a levity, possible to worldly people but unseemly in us."†   (source)
  • It was cruel levity in you to do that.†   (source)
  • …understood regulation that members of Mrs Warren's profession shall be tolerated on the stage only when they are beautiful, exquisitely dressed, and sumptuously lodged and fed; also that they shall, at the end of the play, die of consumption to the sympathetic tears of the whole audience, or step into the next room to commit suicide, or at least be turned out by their protectors and passed on to be "redeemed" by old and faithful lovers who have adored them in spite of their levities.†   (source)
  • But American writers could never render these palliations probable to their readers; their customs and laws are opposed to it; and as they despair of rendering levity of conduct pleasing, they cease to depict it.†   (source)
  • "Our tears have raised the lake, Hurry March, as you might have seen by the shore!" returned Judith, with a feigned levity that she was far from feeling.†   (source)
  • "I must apologize to you for the deplorable levity of my brother," he said, "and I must notify you that this is probably not the last time that his want of tact will cause you serious embarrassment."†   (source)
  • When the time for choosing a husband is arrived, that cold and stern reasoning power which has been educated and invigorated by the free observation of the world, teaches an American woman that a spirit of levity and independence in the bonds of marriage is a constant subject of annoyance, not of pleasure; it tells her that the amusements of the girl cannot become the recreations of the wife, and that the sources of a married woman's happiness are in the home of her husband.†   (source)
  • "Have patience, sir," replied his counsellor; "I might retort your accusation, and blame the inconsiderate levity which foiled my design, and misled your own better judgment.†   (source)
  • …age; a theatre, the temple of Melpomene; the reigning family, the august blood of our kings; a concert, a musical solemnity; the General Commandant of the province, the illustrious warrior, who, etc.; the pupils in the seminary, these tender levities; errors imputed to newspapers, the imposture which distills its venom through the columns of those organs; etc. The lawyer had, accordingly, begun with an explanation as to the theft of the apples,—an awkward matter couched in fine style;…†   (source)
  • They were very near the blockhouse, so near indeed as to have been overlooked at the first eager inquiry, and there was a mocking levity in their postures and gestures, for their limbs were stiffening in different attitudes, intended to resemble life, at which the soul revolted.†   (source)
  • The downcast and sorrowful looks of these venerable men, their silence and their mournful posture, formed a strong contrast to the levity of the revellers on the outside of the castle.†   (source)
  • It seemed to him this evening as if the cruelty of his outburst to Rosamond had made an obligation for him, and he dreaded the obligation: he dreaded Lydgate's unsuspecting good-will: he dreaded his own distaste for his spoiled life, which would leave him in motiveless levity.†   (source)
  • It was said without levity, for Judith was saddened by her recollections, and yet she had been too much accustomed to live for self, and for the indulgence of her own vanities, to feel her mother's wrongs very keenly.†   (source)
  • This sentiment was uttered with as much simplicity of manner as of feeling, and Judith rewarded it with a smile so sweet, that even Deerslayer, who had imbibed a prejudice against the girl in consequence of Hurry's suspicions of her levity, felt its charm, notwithstanding half its winning influence was lost in the feeble light.†   (source)
  • But although no man with less scruple made his ordinary habits and feelings bend to his interest, it was the misfortune of this Prince, that his levity and petulance were perpetually breaking out, and undoing all that had been gained by his previous dissimulation.†   (source)
  • The awkwardness of the Delaware in his new attire caused his friend to smile more than once that day, but he carefully abstained from the use of any of those jokes which would have been bandied among white men on such an occasion, the habits of a chief, the dignity of a warrior on his first path, and the gravity of the circumstances in which they were placed uniting to render so much levity out of season.†   (source)
  • The ideas of chivalrous honour, which, amidst his wildness and levity, never utterly abandoned De Bracy, prohibited him from doing the knight any injury in his defenceless condition, and equally interdicted his betraying him to Front-de-Boeuf, who would have had no scruples to put to death, under any circumstances, the rival claimant of the fief of Ivanhoe.†   (source)
  • our graver business Frowns at this levity.   (source)
    levity = amusement or a lack of seriousness
  • Singular, communed the guest with himself, the wonderfully unequal faculty of metempsychosis possessed by them, that the puerperal dormitory and the dissecting theatre should be the seminaries of such frivolity, that the mere acquisition of academic titles should suffice to transform in a pinch of time these votaries of levity into exemplary practitioners of an art which most men anywise eminent have esteemed the noblest.†   (source)
  • J. J. O'MOLLOY: (In barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with a voice of pained protest) This is no place for indecent levity at the expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor.†   (source)
  • In a word, as the whole relation is carefully garbled of all the levity and looseness that was in it, so it all applied, and with the utmost care, to virtuous and religious uses.†   (source)
  • My lord, I must confess I know this woman; And five years since there was some speech of marriage Betwixt myself and her; which was broke off, Partly for that her promis'd proportions Came short of composition; but in chief For that her reputation was disvalued In levity: since which time of five years I never spake with her, saw her, nor heard from her, Upon my faith and honour.†   (source)
  • Jones exprest some indignation at this levity, and spoke with the utmost contrition for what had happened.†   (source)
  • Attempts of this kind would not often be made with levity or rashness, because they could seldom be made without danger to the authors, unless in cases of a tyrannical exercise of the federal authority.†   (source)
  • We read not that St. John did Exorcise the Water of Jordan; nor Philip the Water of the river wherein he baptized the Eunuch; nor that any Pastor in the time of the Apostles, did take his spittle, and put it to the nose of the person to be Baptized, and say, "In odorem suavitatis," that is, "for a sweet savour unto the Lord;" wherein neither the Ceremony of Spittle, for the uncleannesse; nor the application of that Scripture for the levity, can by any authority of man be justified.†   (source)
  • In his youth He had the wit which I can well observe To-day in our young lords; but they may jest Till their own scorn return to them unnoted, Ere they can hide their levity in honour So like a courtier: contempt nor bitterness Were in his pride or sharpness; if they were, His equal had awak'd them; and his honour, Clock to itself, knew the true minute when Exception bid him speak, and at this time His tongue obey'd his hand: who were below him He us'd as creatures of another place;…†   (source)
  • He is already Traduc'd for levity: and 'tis said in Rome That Photinus an eunuch and your maids Manage this war.†   (source)
  • …good reason) he had taken with her name and character, than at any freedoms, in which, under his present circumstances, he had indulged himself with the person of another woman; and to say truth, I believe Honour could never have prevailed on her to leave Upton without her seeing Jones, had it not been for those two strong instances of a levity in his behaviour, so void of respect, and indeed so highly inconsistent with any degree of love and tenderness in great and delicate minds.†   (source)
  • I do not say to keep an equipage, and make a figure, as the world calls it, nor did I expect it, or desire it; for as I abhorred the levity and extravagance of my former life, so I chose now to live retired, frugal, and within ourselves.†   (source)
  • My lover had been at the gates of death, and at the very brink of eternity; and, it seems, had been struck with a due remorse, and with sad reflections upon his past life of gallantry and levity; and among the rest, criminal correspondence with me, which was neither more nor less than a long-continued life of adultery, and represented itself as it really was, not as it had been formerly thought by him to be, and he looked upon it now with a just and religious abhorrence.†   (source)
  • Indifference may, perhaps, sometimes yield to it; but the usual triumphs gained by perseverance in a lover are over caprice, prudence, affectation, and often an exorbitant degree of levity, which excites women not over-warm in their constitutions to indulge their vanity by prolonging the time of courtship, even when they are well enough pleased with the object, and resolve (if they ever resolve at all) to make him a very pitiful amends in the end.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)