vivacity

From vivac(ious) +‎ -ity, borrowed from Latin vīvācitās.

• IPA^(key): /vɪˈvæsɪti/

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• Hyphenation: vi‧va‧ci‧ty

vivacity (countable and uncountable, plural vivacities)

1. The quality or state of being vivacious.
   • 1612, Francis Bacon, “Of Youth and Age”, in Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral‎^[1]:

     But reposed natures may do well in youth. […] On the other side, heat and vivacity in age, is an excellent composition for business.

   • 1738, David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part I, Section III. Of the Ideas of the Memory and the Imagination,^[2]

     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.

   • 1766, Oliver Goldsmith, chapter 1, in The Vicar of Wakefield‎^[3]:

     The one entertained me with her vivacity when I was gay, the other with her sense when I was serious.

   • 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:

     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?

   • 1819, Walter Scott, chapter 5, in The Bride of Lammermoor‎^[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 […]

   • 1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 2, in Anne of Green Gables‎^[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 […]

• liveliness
• vivaciousness

• vacivity