Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Spirited nature or character; spirit; liveliness; life; animation.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The property of being spirited, of having spirit.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun quality of being active or spirited or alive and vigorous

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Your particular blend of incompetence and mean spiritedness is truly galling.

    McGinn’s Budget Briefing: Gloom, Doom, and Reorganization « PubliCola 2010

  • Frankly, its affected mean-spiritedness is inexcusably tame, especially when compared to the lurid rarities programmed at each QT Fest.

    GreenCine Daily: Grindhouse, 4/4. 2007

  • It will be a sad day indeed when such public-spiritedness is driven out of British politics.

    Lord Bonkers' latest diary 2005

  • It will be a sad day indeed when such public-spiritedness is driven out of British politics.

    Archive 2005-09-01 2005

  • Much of modern history can be explained by the search of what Plato called spiritedness for legitimate self-expression.

    THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND Allan Bloom 2003

  • Much of modern history can be explained by the search of what Plato called spiritedness for legitimate self-expression.

    THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND Allan Bloom 2003

  • As Kristol points out in the essay, the meaning of the phrase "public spiritedness" has flipped since the 18th century.

    The Seattle Times 2011

  • KAPLAN: Well, I wrote -- there's a chapter called "Clean Toilets," and I think it's the collapse of empires or whatever, and it's just two pages at the beginning of that chapter, and I talked about it because to me the availability and degree of cleanliness of public toilets may offer insights in terms of the public - "spiritedness" and degree of civil society in that place.

    The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the 21st Century 1996

  • It's just not in my nature, really – and has a good line in the deliberately bland: to hear him describe the internet, and Wikipedia, is to hear a tale of public spiritedness, of millions of people working towards a common good, even though he must know that the thing he heads is far stranger and less dependable than that.

    The Saturday interview: Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales 2011

  • All the no-saying and no-preaching in the world will fail to keep men, and youths growing into manhood, away from John Barleycorn when John Barleycorn is everywhere accessible, and where John Barleycorn is everywhere the connotation of manliness, and daring, and great-spiritedness.

    Chapter 16 2010

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