insuavity

English

Etymology

From Latin insuavitas. Compare French insuavité. See in- (“not”) +‎ suavity.

Noun

insuavity (countable and uncountable, plural insuavities)

1. (obsolete) Lack of suavity; unpleasantness.
   • 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC:

     All fears, griefs, suspicions, discontents, įmbonities, insuavities, are swallowed up and drowned in this Euripus, this Irish sea, this ocean of misery

   • 1878 January–December, Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], published 1878, →OCLC:

     It was not till this moment that Clym recollected her to be the person who had behaved so barbarously to Eustacia. It partly explained the insuavity with which the woman greeted him.

   • 1898, Bernard Capes, A True Princess:

     He was bearded, blunt, thickset, and he wore gold-rimmed spectacles. In his bourrue-bienfaisance, in his honesty, and in his brusque insuavity towards such as would compel his sympathy without justification, he was the very type of the dogmatic family doctor—of the gruffly practical allopathist of the old school.

References

• “insuavity”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.