Levity is light-hearted treatment of a serious matter. A moment of levity, no time for levity, unseemly levity.
It is nearly always used with disapproval or with relief, depending on whether the moment could bear it. The Latin means lightness in weight, and levity is the exact opposite of gravity in both its senses.
1nounlevityLight-hearted treatment of a serious matter.
“His joke brought a moment of levity to the sad occasion.”
levity is a lightness.
Latin levitas means lightness, from levis, light in weight; it is the opposite of gravitas.
Latin
levitās — lightness, frivolity
English, today
levity
Built from
Coined in 1564, from Latin levitās (“lightness, frivolity”), from levis (“lightness (in weight)”). Cognate to lever, and more distantly, light.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA