What's the difference between blithe and levity?

Blithe


Definition:

  • (a.) Gay; merry; sprightly; joyous; glad; cheerful; as, a blithe spirit.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) On Wednesday, the ire of the marchers was focused on all those Lib Dems who blithely signed the NUS's anti-fees pledge ("I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative" – yesterday, Nick Clegg limply said that he "should have been more careful" than to put his name to it).
  • (2) Instead, the spending review blithely asserted "couples with children must work 24 hours per week between them" in order to get a credit that is worth up to an annual maximum of £3,870.
  • (3) Last month, for example, the Daily Telegraph's Peter Oborne bemoaned their "devastating" fate, in a piece worth quoting at reasonable length, if only to prove that the idea of an out-of-touch elite blithely wreaking havoc is not the preserve of hard-bitten lefties.
  • (4) This is why, you see, people with rucksacks pummel all those in their immediate vicinity with their giant sacks as they trundle on their way, whacking them about as they blithely move about trains, pavements or any other public area.
  • (5) These films were a blithe rebuttal of the critic Edward Said’s insight that, in a novel like Mansfield Park, the “English” story necessarily concealed the story, located elsewhere but inextricable from the main narrative, of a West Indian sugar plantation.
  • (6) Click here for the Magic in the Moonlight trailer Compared with the gloomy ruminations on ageing and aspiration that characterised the well-received Blue Jasmine, which won Cate Blanchett an Oscar , this is Allen going back to the knockabout farce and blithe May-December couplings that populate his lighter films.
  • (7) This narrative is a form of manufacture of innocence to mask a great crime: what your script blithely calls "the detainee program".
  • (8) Here lies our greatest risk, one insufficiently appreciated by those who so blithely accept the tentacles of corporation, press and state insinuating their way into the private sphere.
  • (9) When he arrived at the venue and was confronted by a motley horde of fans, tipped off by a tweet, instead of sidling in the back to pace about alone in a corridor, like a normal human would, Fry blithely faced the crowd, chatting and signing autographs.
  • (10) She says she "naively stumbled into the campaign", starting the petition on Change.org, which she found through a Google search, and setting her target at a blithely optimistic 1m signatures.
  • (11) I have a concern that there are too many of them – and most will gather dust on shelves, and hospitals will go blithely on as they always have.
  • (12) But they blithely ignore the fact that wealth isn't being created under the existing broken economic model.
  • (13) Mr Osborne can hardly not know this, but he continues blithely to define living within our means as a government challenge, rather than a wider challenge to the entire public and private sector.
  • (14) Yes, when we all had the blithe assumption that houses would always rise in value, that bankers were always going to get £3m bonuses.
  • (15) In a fascinating recent article the economist Tyler Cowen pointed out the problem with blithe assumptions about a better future – they miss out on the history of what actually happened in the great industrial transformations of the past.
  • (16) Phone jammed to her ear, laptop open on her knee, she was blithely conducting a conference call while wearing highlighter foils.
  • (17) The original sin of the euro-enthusiasts was to settle the politics first and then blithely assume that the economics would sort themselves out.
  • (18) This distinction, popularised by Michael Ignatieff in the mid-1990s, has received much debate, which Bragg blithely ignores.
  • (19) It’s just interesting that home advantage – the chance to build a rapport with local audiences; familiarity with local culture, etc – is being blithely squandered.
  • (20) But clearly there is a difference between blithely hurtling into catastrophe and trying to lead a party away from it.

Levity


Definition:

  • (n.) Lack of steadiness or constancy; disposition to change; fickleness; volatility.
  • (n.) The quality of weighing less than something else of equal bulk; relative lightness, especially as shown by rising through, or floating upon, a contiguous substance; buoyancy; -- opposed to gravity.
  • (n.) Lack of gravity and earnestness in deportment or character; trifling gayety; frivolity; sportiveness; vanity.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Penetration will only occur once you have established a sense of levity, safety and trust between the both of you, plus a high level of non-penetrative eroticism.
  • (2) He’s similar in that sense to his icon Dizzee, who was always happy to balance his weightier stuff with moments of levity.
  • (3) Niemeyer’s buildings are characterised by their levity, playfulness, and curves, which are all antithetical to brutalism.
  • (4) Any such levity, however, is leavened by the tacit acknowledgment that existence is futile, and we are all just bags of flesh and bones whiling away the days before death and putrefaction sets in.
  • (5) There was more levity in a panel for the unlikely hit political drama Borgen about the intricacies of Danish coalition government, which brought together actors Sidse Babett Knudsen and Pilou Asbaek - who played prime minister Birgitte Nyborg and her spin doctor Kasper Juul.
  • (6) In Ferguson last summer, there wasn’t much levity in the days after Mike Brown was killed, either.
  • (7) In this spirit, Formation compels its viewers to acknowledge the beautiful complexity of history, culture and customs, with levity and passion.
  • (8) Perhaps he was a children's entertainer whom Ivan the Terrible enlisted in a rare moment of levity.
  • (9) They wanted someone associated with April who could inject a little humour and levity, not in a farcical way but in a real way.
  • (10) With One Love, Grande rose to the occasion with heart, strength and moments of out-of-body levity that can only come from a big pop show.
  • (11) H ow paranoid were you before you made this movie and how paranoid are you now?” That question was perhaps the only moment of levity during a conversation with documentarian Alex Gibney after the credits rolled on Zero Days, a terrifying account of the cyberwar that is already raging on thumb drives and mainframes from Washington to Tel Aviv to Isfahan Province in Iran and anywhere else that can connect to the internet.
  • (12) Klopp clearly enjoyed himself on the touchline in the closing stages and he brought a degree of levity into his post-match press conference, even offering up a suggestion for the top of journalists’ pieces.
  • (13) In a rare moment of levity during Hunt's testimony, the culture secretary was asked about an evening reception and dinner with James Murdoch where he was said to have hidden behind a tree to avoid being seen by the Wall Street Journal's Iain Martin.
  • (14) This was significant and, at the time, outrageous – in 1969, it must have seemed that seriousness had won out for good, with levity confined to novelty singles and bubblegum.
  • (15) The archaic levity tells you much about the debate, which, apart from the sponsor's opening remarks and contribution from another women in the chamber – the film-maker Baroness (Beeban) Kidron – did not even come close to articulating the change that has occurred since Tim Berners-Lee delivered his paper on a distributed hypertext system to his boss at CERN in March 1989.
  • (16) "I didn't want to have sex," says Geimer with brittle levity.
  • (17) There are moments of levity: when Bill Lincoln is giving evidence about his alibi (buying fish at Billingsgate market on Good Friday), it transpires that he is known by friends as “Billy the Fish”; James Creighton, the mate he meets when he has his regular Turkish bath, and who gives evidence on his behalf, is known as “Jimmy Two Baths”.
  • (18) They have even invented an alter ego band named The Reflektors, in which they perform wearing giant papier-mache heads of themselves, to add to the levity, and perhaps also to relieve the weight of what it means to be one of the world's biggest bands.
  • (19) He has been chairing the weekly political debates since 1994, often injecting the proceedings with some much-needed levity, and has become synonymous with the programme, ignoring constant speculation about when he might retire, and who might replace him.
  • (20) I said I liked it for its conceptual cheekiness – there can be no politics without quixotic energy and levity.