Primary
''vivacity'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260904152658-00-⌔
vivacity - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Noun
vivacity (countable and uncountable, plural vivacities)
- The quality or state of being vivacious.
- ✤ But reposed natures may do well in youth. […] On the other side, heat and vivacity in age, is an excellent composition for business.1
- ✤ We find by experience, that when any impression has been present with the mind, it again makes its appearance there as an idea; and this it may do after two different ways: either when in its new appearance it retains a considerable degree of its first vivacity, and is somewhat intermediate betwixt an impression and an idea: or when it entirely loses that vivacity, and is a perfect idea.2
- ✤ The one entertained me with her vivacity when I was gay, the other with her sense when I was serious.3
- ✤ In the name of truth and common sense, why should not one woman acknowledge that she can take more exercise than another? or, in other words, that she has a sound constitution; and why to damp innocent vivacity, is she darkly to be told, that men will draw conclusions which she little thinks of?4
- ✤ Some secret sorrow, or the brooding spirit of some moody passion, had quenched the light and ingenuous vivacity of youth in a countenance singularly fitted to display both […]5
- ✤ […] an extraordinary observer might have seen that the chin was very pointed and pronounced; that the big eyes were full of spirit and vivacity; that the mouth was sweet-lipped and expressive; that the forehead was broad and full; in short, our discerning extraordinary observer might have concluded that no commonplace soul inhabited the body of this stray woman-child […]6
Etymology
From Latin vīvācitās (whence -acity).
Pronunciation
- IPA: /vɪˈvæsɪti/
- Audio (US): 🔊
- Hyphenation: vi‧va‧ci‧ty
Printed 2026-09-04.
(echo:: @ ⌗)
Link to original Footnotes
1612, Francis Bacon, “Of Youth and Age”, in Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral : ↩
1738, David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part I, Section III. Of the Ideas of the Memory and the Imagination, ↩
1766, Oliver Goldsmith, chapter 1, in The Vicar of Wakefield : ↩
1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, “The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed”, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], published 1792, →OCLC, page 54: ↩
1819, Walter Scott, chapter 5, in The Bride of Lammermoor : ↩
1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 2, in Anne of Green Gables : ↩
Secondary
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