perspicuity - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Noun
perspicuity (countable and uncountable, plural perspicuities)
- Clarity, lucidity, especially in expression; the state or characteristic of being perspicuous.
- ✤ […] whether through the first officer’s want of perspicuity or my own stupidity, I was not a bit the wiser for the explanation.1
- Perspicacity; insight.
- ✤ “Well,” I answered, at first with uncertainty, then with inspiration, “he would do splendidly to lead your cotillon, if you think of having one.” “So you do not dance, Mr. Crocker?” I was somewhat set back by her perspicuity.2
- ✤ Thompson, a high school dropout, said with rare perspicuity that he doubted the FBI would hire him.3
- (rare) Transparency; translucence.
- ✤ It must have been on some such day of harsh sunlight, the incisive February brightness that gives perspicuity without warmth.4
Etymology
Borrowed from Late Latin perspicuitās (“evidentness”, “self-evidency”, literally “transparency”, “clarity”, “lucidity”), from Latin perspicuus (“clear”, “transparent”; “evident”); compare perspicacity and the French perspicuité. By surface analysis, perspicuous + -ity.
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) enPR: pər’spĭkyo͞oʹĭti, IPA: /ˌpəːspɪˈkjuːɪti/
- Audio (Southern England): 🔊
- (US) enPR: pər’spəkyo͞oʹədi, IPA: /ˌpɚspəˈkjuəti/
Printed 2026-09-04.
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Footnotes
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1880, [George] Bernard Shaw, chapter XVIII, in The Irrational Knot […] Being the Second Novel of His Nonage, London: Archibald Constable & Co., published 1905, →OCLC, page 354: ↩
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1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, page 51: ↩
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1965 March 19, “The Stupid Spy”, in Time: ↩
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1900, Edith Wharton, chapter 11, in The Touchstone: ↩