amenity

What it means

1. uncountablePleasantness.

   We especially enjoyed the amenity of the climate on our last holiday.

   1 more example

   The harbor of Port Royal, rendered gloomy by recollections of misery, was avoided; and after searching the coast and discovering places, which were so full of amenity, that melancholy itself could not but change its humor, as it gazed, the followers of Calvin planted themselves on the banks of the river May.

   1834, George Bancroft, “Spaniards in the United States”, in History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent, volume I (Colonial History), Boston, Mass.: Charles Bowen; London: R. J. Kennett, →OCLC, page 71

2. uncountableConvenience.
3. uncountableurban studiesA unit pertaining to the infrastructure of a community, such as a public toilet, a postbox, a library, among others.

   Suburbia was the prescribed antidote to the dreariness of the hypertrophied industrial city—and most American cities had never been anything but that. They were short on amenity, overcrowded, and artless. Americans were sick of them and saw no way to improve them.

   2005, James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency, Grove Atlantic, page 40

   Synonyms: facility, infrastructure

In a sentence

We especially enjoyed the amenity of the climate on our last holiday.

Where it comes from

1. Latinamoenitās“pleasantness, delightfulness”
2. Middle Frenchamenité
3. Middle Englishamenite
4. Englishamenity

Inherited from Middle English amenite, amenyte, partly from Middle French amenité and partly from its etymon, Latin amoenitās (“pleasantness, delightfulness”), from amoenus (“pleasant, delightful”), of unknown origin.