The Collaborative International Dictionary
Solemnity \So*lem"ni*ty\, n.; pl. Solemnities. [L. solemnitas, solennitas: cf. F. solennit['e], solemnit['e], OF. also sollempnit['e].]
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A rite or ceremony performed with religious reverence; religious or ritual ceremony; as, the solemnity of a funeral, a sacrament.
Great was the cause; our old solemnities From no blind zeal or fond tradition rise, But saved from death, our Argives yearly pay These grateful honors to the god of day.
--Pope. -
ceremony adapted to impress with awe.
The forms and solemnities of the last judgment.
--Atterburry. -
Ceremoniousness; impressiveness; seriousness; grave earnestness; formal dignity; gravity.
With much glory and great solemnity.
--Chaucer.The statelines and gravity of the Spaniards shows itself in the solemnity of their language.
--Addison.These promises were often made with great solemnity and confirmed with an oath.
--J. Edwards. -
Hence, affected gravity or seriousness.
Solemnity 's a cover for a sot.
--Young. Solemn state or feeling; awe or reverence; also, that which produces such a feeling; as, the solemnity of an audience; the solemnity of Westminster Abbey.
(Law) A solemn or formal observance; proceeding according to due form; the formality which is necessary to render a thing done valid.
Wiktionary
n. (plural of solemnity English)
Usage examples of "solemnities".
In Athens, three months later, the dedication of the Olympieion was occasion for festivals which recalled the Roman solemnities, but what in Rome had been celebrated on earth seemed there to occur in the heavens.
To prevent this, surely these guardian gods ought to have given precepts of morals and a rule of life to the people by whom they were worshipped in so many temples, with so great a variety of priests and sacrifices, with such numberless and diverse rites, so many festal solemnities, so many celebrations of magnificent games.
Whence, also, they have compelled their worshippers, with terrible commands, to dedicate to them the uncleanness of the fabulous theology, to put them among their solemnities, and reckon them among divine things.
But concerning the solemnities of the Jews, either why or how far they were instituted by divine authority, and afterwards, in due time, by the same authority taken away from the people of God, to whom the mystery of eternal life was revealed, we have both spoken elsewhere, especially when we were treating against the Manichaeans, and also intend to speak in this work in a more suitable place.
But the senate, fearing to condemn the religious solemnities of their ancestors, and therefore compelled to assent to Numa, were nevertheless so convinced that those books were pernicious, that they did not order them to be buried again, knowing that human curiosity would thereby be excited to seek with far greater eagerness after the matter already divulged, but ordered the scandalous relics to be destroyed with fire.
Finally, no one, when he has read that book, wonders that they desired to have even the obscenity of the stage among divine things, or that, wishing to be thought gods, they should be delighted with the crimes of the gods, or that all those sacred solemnities, whose obscenity occasions laughter, and whose shameful cruelty causes horror, should be in agreement with their passions.
As to things of smaller value, or those which it was difficult to distinguish from each other, the solemnities of which we speak were not requisite to obtain legal proprietorship.
They adopted her, with grave and formal military ceremonies of their own invention - solemnities is the truer word.
It is the more important, therefore, that each detail of such solemnities be determined in advance.