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 a work of art.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Latin concinnitās, from concinnāre, to put in order, from concinnus, deftly joined.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Coined 1531 by Sir Thomas Elyot in his treatise, The Boke Named The Governor, from Latin concinnitās ("skillfully put together").

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Examples

Comments

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  • 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

  • Ex: "When in Cincinnati, you will have to taste Skyline's three-way to believe the dish's unintuitive concinnity."

    August 24, 2009

  • 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

  • "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

  • 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

  • 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