What's the difference between jocular and levity?

Jocular


Definition:

  • (a.) Given to jesting; jocose; as, a jocular person.
  • (a.) Sportive; merry.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) As the contest meandered and the stadium went close to quiet there was a jocular moment when Pardew hopped in irritation at a United challenge and the manager dropped his ever-present notebook on the pitch.
  • (2) The tone was jocular, but the intent deadly serious, as becomes clear talking to Jón and Einar Örn Benediktsson, who used to sing alongside Björk in the Sugarcubes and is now Reykjavik's head of culture and tourism.
  • (3) You kindly suggested that it would be helpful if I put them in writing – despite the Freedom of Information Act!” A jocular reference?
  • (4) Welby, who was enthroned as a bishop last November, presented a jocular, relaxed face to the press as he appeared for the first time at Lambeth Palace, surrounded by the portraits of archbishops past.
  • (5) At this time I can’t say anything about transfers,” he said before turning jocular.
  • (6) The cast of The Five vacillated between feigned solemnity and jocular NFL pregame oafishness.
  • (7) Until now, the answer would have been for Network Rail to simply borrow: its spending on the never-never has largely escaped public attention, despite the industry jocularly speaking of the "Network Rail credit card".
  • (8) Alito was not amused by Kagan’s jocular stand for precedent, and declared the original Brulotte “a bald act of policymaking”.
  • (9) The tone was jocular, but the president’s words on Friday betrayed mounting frustration with opponents in his own party who could derail perhaps the biggest domestic policy goal of his last two years in office.
  • (10) The auteur that's matched Malick for headlines this year, Lars von Trier, banned by the festival's board of directors after mounting a jocular defence of Adolf Hitler in an official press conference, was given a consolation prize of sorts when Kirsten Dunst picked up the award for best actress for her part in Melancholia.
  • (11) Poroshenko’s treatment in Washington will also invite comparison to Trump’s warm and jocular Oval Office meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, on May 10, the day after firing the FBI director, James Comey.
  • (12) An overjoyed Mark Sampson was in jocular mood after his England side reached a significant milestone in their history, posting their first knockout stage victory in any World Cup finals with a 2-1 win over Norway in Ottawa.
  • (13) Catch it on one of the 300-odd UK screens it opened across yesterday, and witness a jocular salute to the redemptive power of youth, rebellion and getting fucked-up.
  • (14) Although schizoaffective manic patients resembled manics in their tendency to show combinatory thinking, their productions lacked the jocularity of the manics.
  • (15) It all sounds too easy, a bit jocular, there's more assertion than proof.
  • (16) Derived from The Wizard of Oz , the term "friend of Dorothy" (or FOD) was for many years a carefully guarded euphemism in homosexual circles, until in the 1980s it began to be used openly and jocularly.
  • (17) Last summer he described his development as a writer in a typically jocular column for the Guardian Review book club, which featured the first of his Culture novels, Use of Weapons.
  • (18) Trust in John Whittingdale, the culture secretary, has not been bolstered by jocular remarks envisaging the BBC’s demise as “a tempting prospect” .
  • (19) Corbyn will face May at prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons for the first time on Wednesday, and said he expected it to be a less jocular affair than under David Cameron.
  • (20) Indeed in the course of a single phone call he would veer alarmingly from bonhomie, to bullying, to pleading and then back to a jocular mood.

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.