Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Harmony in the arrangement or interarrangement of parts with respect to a whole.
- noun Studied elegance and facility in style of expression.
- noun An instance of harmonious arrangement or studied elegance and facility.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Fitness; suitableness; connectedness; harmony.
- noun Specifically In grammar and rhetoric, proper and consistent adjustment of words and clauses as regards both phraseology and construction; fitness and harmony of style.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun rare Internal harmony or fitness; mutual adaptation of parts; elegance; -- used chiefly of style of discourse.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun music The
harmonious reinforcement of the various parts of awork of art .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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There was a moment of inner peace in which belief and doubt merged into a strangely comforting concinnity.
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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. Marcus Tullius Cicero
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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. Marcus Tullius Cicero
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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. Marcus Tullius Cicero
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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.
Fables Aesop 1880
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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 Grant Allen 1873
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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 ....
The Biglow Papers James Russell Lowell 1855
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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 ....
The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell James Russell Lowell 1855
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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 John Wilson Ross 1852
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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 John Wilson Ross 1852
reesetee commented on the word concinnity
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).
February 6, 2008
ncarraway commented on the word concinnity
Ex: "When in Cincinnati, you will have to taste Skyline's three-way to believe the dish's unintuitive concinnity."
August 24, 2009
milosrdenstvi commented on the word concinnity
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...
December 20, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word concinnity
"Sign language has its own syntax patterns, dialects and accents (American Southerners are known for "blurry" signing), and even usage experts, who teach native signers to use the language with concinnity."
"Little Strangers" by Nathan Heller, p 89 of the November 19, 2012 issue of the New Yorker
November 29, 2012
qms commented on the word concinnity
Now here is a word I would have guessed had a different meaning:
Indulging a tender affinity
With a partner in consanguinity?
If from the same nest
It's mortal incest;
With cousins it's venial concinnity.
January 29, 2015
qms commented on the word concinnity
A rock speeding in from infinity
Can slow in the stellar vicinity
And give up deep space
For the solar embrace
To circle in languid concinnity.
May 14, 2018