Clarity is the quality of being clear, either clear to see through or clear to understand. Water in a pool where you can count the tiles on the bottom; a set of instructions that leaves you with no questions at the end.
The everyday use is about thinking and speaking: clarity of thought, clarity of purpose, a lawyer asking for clarity on one clause of a contract. Jewellers turn it into a measurement, where a diamond's clarity grade records how few specks and flaws sit inside the stone, running from flawless down through the included grades. Sound has it too, as in the clarity of an old recording where every instrument stays separate. Editors write edited for clarity when they have tidied a quotation without changing what it says. The adjective is clear and the verb is clarify, so a request for clarity is a polite way of asking someone to say it again in plainer words.
1nounclarityThe quality of being easy to understand.
“The report gains clarity once the tables move to the back.”
synonyms: lucidity, clearness
2nountransparencyThe quality of being clear to see through or clear to hear.
“The clarity of the water surprised everyone who had swum there before.”
synonyms: transparency
3noungradeA graded measure of how free a gemstone is of internal flaws.
“The ring cost less than expected because the clarity grade was low.”
Clarity comes from Latin claritas, built on clarus, clear, and it reached English through Old French clarte and Middle English claritee. Clear itself came from the same Latin adjective by a different road, so the two words are close relatives that arrived separately. Further back still sits the Proto-Indo-European root kelh-.
Proto-Indo-European
*kelh₁-
Latin
clāritās
Old French
clarté
Middle English
claritee
English, today
clarity
Built from
From Middle English claritee, from Old French clarté, from Latin clāritās, from clārus (“clear”); equivalent to clear + ity.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA