Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Harmony in the arrangement or interarrangement of parts with respect to a whole.
- n. Studied elegance and facility in style of expression: "He has what one character calls 'the gifts of concinnity and concision,' that deft swipe with a phrase that can be so devastating in children” ( Elizabeth Ward).
- n. An instance of harmonious arrangement or studied elegance and facility.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Fitness; suitableness; connectedness; harmony.
- n. Specifically In grammar and rhetoric, proper and consistent adjustment of words and clauses as regards both phraseology and construction; fitness and harmony of style.
Wiktionary
- n. The harmonious reinforcement of the various parts of a work of art.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Internal harmony or fitness; mutual adaptation of parts; elegance; -- used chiefly of style of discourse.
Etymologies
- From Latin concinnitās, from concinnāre, to put in order, from concinnus, deftly joined.
Examples
“There was a moment of inner peace in which belief and doubt merged into a strangely comforting concinnity.”
Analog Science Fiction and Fact
“Gorgias, it is said, was the first Orator who practised this species of _concinnity_.”
Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker.
“But there are likewise certain forms of expression, which have such a natural concinnity, as will necessarily have a similar effect to that of regular numbers.”
Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker.
“This is the reason why our numbers are not to be so conspicuous in prose as in verse; and that in prose, what is called a _numerous_ style, does not always become so by the use of numbers, but sometimes either by the concinnity of our language, or the smooth juncture of our words.”
Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker.
“None of the stories are precisely those of Aesop, and none have the concinnity, terseness, and unmistakable deduction of the lesson intended to be taught by the fable, so conspicuous in the great Greek fabulist.”
“Laplacian evolutionism, this nebular theory of such exquisite concinnity, here reduced to its simplest terms and most elementary dimensions, has received many hard knocks from later astronomers, and has been a good deal bowled over, both on mathematical and astronomical grounds, by recent investigators of nebulæ and meteors.”
Falling in Love With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science
“We know not whether to admire most the genial, fresh, and discursive concinnity of the author, or his playful fancy, weird imagination, and compass of style, at once both objective and subjective ....”
“Foreign Secretary, -- the ornate and correct rhetorician, so famed for the concinnity of his phrases, the Earl of Beaconsfield.”
Tacitus and Bracciolini The Annals Forged in the XVth Century
“There is no such writing as this in any of the works of Tacitus, who, though curt and concise, is always remarkable for concinnity and clearness of expression as well as for perspicuity and consecutiveness of idea.”
Tacitus and Bracciolini The Annals Forged in the XVth Century
“Were such and such things rightly methodized? such and such words well placed? was there an exact concinnity in what was said?" and the like.”
The Whole Works of the Rev. John Howe, M.A. with a Memoir of the Author. Vol. VI.
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘concinnity’.
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Kathy C's List
My favorite words
golconda, au fait, purlicue, tautonym, cunctatory, gynecomastia, vesta, imprimatur, efflux, antediluvian, protean, phlegmatic and 24 more...
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Words that you discovered on Wordie
flibbertigibbet, humdudgeon, grawlix, upside, concinnity, aposiopesis, odalisque, angelology, cacoethes
milosrdenstvi Awesome in the 19th century. Pretentious in the 21st.
I wonder if I could make a list like that? Probably not; I'm pretty much as pretentious as they come... Dec 19, 2009
ncarraway Ex: "When in Cincinnati, you will have to taste Skyline's three-way to believe the dish's unintuitive concinnity." Aug 24, 2009
reesetee Internal harmony or fitness in the adaptation of parts to a whole or to each other. Also, studied elegance of design or arrangement (used chiefly to describe literary style).
Feb 6, 2008