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A.Word.A.Day--levity

levity (LEV-i-tee) noun

1. Lack of seriousness; frivolity.

2. Inconstancy; fickleness.

3. Lightness in weight.

[From Latin levitas, from levis (light).]

"`And guess what?' Jack Kemp asked, trying to shoosh the enthusiastic crowd. When some in the audience started shouting back guesses, he had to say `That was a rhetorical question - you don't have to answer.' That was the only moment of ad-lib levity in the disciplined march of speeches in San Diego." William Safire, San Diego Speech Scorecard, The New York Times, August 19, 1996.

"He projected affability more easily than authority, levity more readily than gravity." Frank Bruni, Ambling Into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush, HarperCollins (New York), March 5, 2002.

This week's theme: relatively lesser-known antonyms of everyday words.

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