vivacity

plural vivacities

1. countableuncountableThe quality or state of being vivacious.

   The one entertained me with her vivacity when I was gay, the other with her sense when I was serious.

   1766, Oliver Goldsmith, chapter 1, in The Vicar of Wakefield

   5 more examples

   But reposed natures may do well in youth. […] On the other side, heat and vivacity in age, is an excellent composition for business.

   1612, Francis Bacon, “Of Youth and Age”, in Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral

   1738, David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part I, Section III. Of the Ideas of the Memory and the Imagination, We find by experience, that when any impression has been present with the mind, it again makes its appearance there as an idea; and this it may do after two different ways: either when in its new appearance it retains a considerable degree of its first vivacity, and is somewhat intermediate betwixt an impression and an idea: or when it entirely loses that vivacity, and is a perfect idea.

   In the name of truth and common sense, why should not one woman acknowledge that she can take more exercise than another? or, in other words, that she has a sound constitution; and why to damp innocent vivacity, is she darkly to be told, that men will draw conclusions which she little thinks of?

   1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, “The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed”, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], published 1792, →OCLC, page 54

   Some secret sorrow, or the brooding spirit of some moody passion, had quenched the light and ingenuous vivacity of youth in a countenance singularly fitted to display both […]

   1819, Walter Scott, chapter 5, in The Bride of Lammermoor

   […] an extraordinary observer might have seen that the chin was very pointed and pronounced; that the big eyes were full of spirit and vivacity; that the mouth was sweet-lipped and expressive; that the forehead was broad and full; in short, our discerning extraordinary observer might have concluded that no commonplace soul inhabited the body of this stray woman-child […]

   1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 2, in Anne of Green Gables

   Synonyms: liveliness, vivaciousness