''perspicuity'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

↩ 🔳 🔳 🔳

---

Primary

⁀➴

''perspicuity'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260904152658-00-⌔

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.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 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: ↩

2. 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: ↩

3. 1965 March 19, “The Stupid Spy”, in Time: ↩

4. 1900, Edith Wharton, chapter 11, in The Touchstone: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

• • •

---