jucundity

plural jucundities

1. countableobsoleteuncountablePleasantness or happiness.

   2 more examples

   For the act of laughter, which is evidenced by a sweet contraction of the muscles of the face, and a pleasant agitation of the vocal organs, is not merely voluntary, or totally within the jurisdiction of ourselves, but, as it may be constrained by corporal contaction in any, and hath been enforced in some even in their death, so the new, unusual, or unexpected, jucundities which present themselves to any man in his life, at some time or other, will have activity enough to excitate the earthiest soul, and raise a smile from the most composed tempers.

   1650, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […] A[braham] Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […], →OCLC

   The Prieſt ties his ſtole about the neck of the poſſeſſed vvith three knots, and ſays, […] I exorciſe you [evil spirits], and adjure you, and command you, by the povver I have, that you incontinently hear the vvords of my conjuring, and perceive your ſelves overcome, and command you not to depart vvithout licenſe, and ſo I bind you vvith this ſtole of jucundity; […]

   1664, Jeremy [Taylor], “The Church of Rome, as It is at this Day Disordered, Teaches Doctrines, and Uses Practises, which are in Themselves, or in Their True and Immediate Consequences, Direct Impieties, and Give Warranty to a Wicked Life”, in A Disswasive from Popery to the People of Ireland. […], Dublin: […] John Crooke, […], and are to be sold by Samuel Dancer, →OCLC, section X, page 138