Crossword clues for suavity
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Suavity \Suav"i*ty\, n. [L. suavitas: cf. F. suavit['e].]
Sweetness to the taste. [Obs.]
--Sir T. Browne.The quality of being sweet or pleasing to the mind; agreeableness; softness; pleasantness; gentleness; urbanity; as, suavity of manners; suavity of language, conversation, or address.
--Glanvill.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
c.1400, "pleasantness, delightfulness; kindness, gentleness," from Latin suavitatem (nominative suavitas) "sweetness, agreeableness," from suavis (see suave). Some later senses are from French suavité, from Old French soavite "gentleness, sweetness, softness," from the Latin word.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context obsolete English) sweetness to the taste. 2 The quality of being sweet or pleasing to the mind; agreeableness; softness; smoothness; pleasantness; gentleness; urbanity; as, suavity of manners; suavity of language, conversation, or address.
WordNet
Usage examples of "suavity".
He was the incarnation of the Continental ideal of the polished cold Englishman, and had the air of a diplomate such as this country sends to foreign Courts to praise or blame, to declare friendship or war with the same calm suavity and imperturbable politeness.
But Stephanie superadds to those attributes a bitter, mocking cynicism, thinly veiled by artificial suavity and logically irradiant from natural hardness of heart, coupled with an insensibility that has been engendered by cruel experience of human selfishness.
Murray Bradshaw was surprised and confounded at the easy way in which she received his compliments, and played with his advances, after the fashion of the trained ballroom belles, who know how to be almost caressing in manner, and yet are really as far off from the deluded victim of their suavities as the topmost statue of the Milan cathedral from the peasant that kneels on its floor.
Never, too, had I been more impressed with the suavity, the agreeableness, the general charm of his manner.
Lord Chesterfield says that the Duke of Marlborough owed his first promotions to the suavity of his manners, and that without it he could not have risen.