Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Quickness or agility of mind or body.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Lightness; nimbleness.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Archaic Lightness; nimbleness.

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

  • noun alert quickness of mind or body

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

  • noun the gracefulness of a person or animal that is quick and nimble

Etymologies

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

[French légèreté, from Old French legerete, from leger, light; see legerdemain.]

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Examples

  • But then again, the plethora of insane details does contribute to my mind's general legerity, allowing me to often win at trivia game variants (until my intellectual bully of a wife comes along with a smile and beats me within an inch of my life - in the very same categories I'm supposed to have "mastered", and then some).

    notes from the peanut gallery Dean Francis Alfar 2003

  • But then again, the plethora of insane details does contribute to my mind's general legerity, allowing me to often win at trivia game variants (until my intellectual bully of a wife comes along with a smile and beats me within an inch of my life - in the very same categories I'm supposed to have "mastered", and then some).

    Archive 2003-03-01 Dean Francis Alfar 2003

  • Hence, it would be an unpardonable legerity to close our eyes to the dangers lurking beneath an apparent passivity.

    The New World of Islam Lothrop Stoddard 1916

  • Alighting with the legerity of a cat, he swerved leftward in the recoil, and was off, like a streak of mulberry-coloured lightning, down the High.

    Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story Max Beerbohm 1914

  • Alighting with the legerity of a cat, he swerved leftward in the recoil, and was off, like a streak of mulberry-coloured lightning, down the High.

    Zuleika Dobson 1911

  • Rather it is hoped that the haecceity of this enchiridion of arcane and recondite sesquipedalian items will appeal to the oniomania of an eximious Gemeinschaft whose legerity and sophrosyne, whose Sprachgefühl and orexis will find more than fugacious fulfillment among its felicific pages. "

    languagehat.com 2008

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