Brevity vs Levity - What's the difference?
brevity | levity |
(uncountable) The quality of being brief in duration.
* {{quote-book, year=2005
, author=Bill Bryson
, title=A short history of nearly everything
, passage= Thanks to Global Positioning Systems we can see that Europe and North America are parting at about the speed a fingernail grows—roughly two yards in a human lifetime. If you were prepared to wait long enough, you could ride from Los Angeles all the way up to San Francisco. It is only the brevity of lifetimes that keeps us from appreciating the changes.}}
(uncountable) Succinctness; conciseness.
* {{quote-book, year=1966
, author=Jackson E. Morris
, title=Principles of scientific and technical writing
, passage=A good technical writing style will now be defined as a style possessing clarity, brevity , and variety.}}
(rare, countable) A short piece of writing.
Lightness of manner or speech, frivolity.
(obsolete) Lack of steadiness.
The state or quality of being light, buoyancy.
* F. Scott Fitzgerald
* Most of the confidences were unsought - frequently I had feigned sleep, preoccupation or a hostile levity...
* Robert Montgomery Bird:
* 1869 Mary Somerville, On Molecular and Microscopic Science 1.1.12:
(countable) A lighthearted or frivolous act.
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As nouns the difference between brevity and levity
is that brevity is the quality of being brief in duration while levity is lightness of manner or speech, frivolity.brevity
English
Noun
Derived terms
* (l) * (l)See also
*levity
English
Noun
(en-noun)- Hydrogen ... rises in the air on account of its levity .
