What's the difference between lavish and levity?

Lavish


Definition:

  • (a.) Expending or bestowing profusely; profuse; prodigal; as, lavish of money; lavish of praise.
  • (a.) Superabundant; excessive; as, lavish spirits.
  • (v. t.) To expend or bestow with profusion; to use with prodigality; to squander; as, to lavish money or praise.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The standard varies from modest to lavish – choose carefully and you could be staying in an antique-filled room with your host's paintings on the walls, and breakfasting on the veranda of a tropical garden.
  • (2) According to Hairullo, it was always Nazarov’s dream to live lavishly and easily.
  • (3) For more than half a century, Saudi leaders manipulated the United States by feeding our oil addiction, lavishing money on politicians, helping to finance American wars, and buying billions of dollars in weaponry from US companies.
  • (4) These late paintings were deemed too perfect, not "badly done" enough, perhaps, and unchallenging: there was in them a marked absence of painterly lavishness.
  • (5) What Norbert Lynton called "painterly lavishness" took over Scott's work.
  • (6) Obama and Cameron's display of unity on Afghanistan came during a visit in which the US president pushed the boundaries of protocol, bestowing on Cameron a lavish state dinner at the White House and issuing his most enthusiastic endorsement yet of the "rock solid" Anglo-American special relationship.
  • (7) Thus alternative medicine may become a disadvantage, a danger for science (lavished means) and society (misguidance of patients).
  • (8) It is what I do with it, rather than what I am worth, that I believe is more important.” Unlike some of his predecessors, such as Bendor, the 2nd Duke, who lavished diamonds on his lover Coco Chanel and wanted Britain to ally with Hitler, the 6th Duke gave to and supported a string of charities and other worthy causes – £500,000 to farmers hit by the 2001 foot and mouth crisis, for instance – and served diligently on the boards of many military and other charities, including Emmaus , for the homeless, for more than 40 years.
  • (9) Nowhere was this truer than him lavishing tens of thousands of pounds on slanted private polling rather than in helping friends and colleagues get elected."
  • (10) At some point in the future (the theory goes) publishers will no longer need to spend a fortune on marketing Max Hastings' next book by lavishing money on Waterstones or in print.
  • (11) News of the improvements came the day after Sir Michael Wilshaw lavished praise on the performance of England’s primaries, in contrast to the progress of state secondaries, which the Ofsted chief inspector described as being stalled.
  • (12) Indeed, lavish media approval of a scheme so fabulously harebrained as Fiennes's can't but suggest continued respect for a version of masculinity that will always reject domesticity and grandmothers in favour of all-male challenges in the Antarctic, or at the golf club, or, failing that, at the House of Commons.
  • (13) I lavish my kids with money, I lavish the house with it.
  • (14) The place was located in an old warehouse and had been lavishly decorated.
  • (15) Animal rights organisations have been handing out awards and lavishing praise on slaughterhouse designers and burger restaurant chains after "negotiations" for small changes that leave the systems of exploitation intact.
  • (16) The clean-up period – the financial and moral reckoning that can last up to a decade – is when you get to see what a bank and its culture are made of: whether they respond with remorse (rare), with distancing hubris (frequent), or with lavish payouts (always).
  • (17) The most visible sign of this is the arrival each day, when parliament is in session in its lavish, marble-decked halls in the new capital of Naypyidaw , of scores of officers, natty in their freshly pressed olive drab.
  • (18) I wanted a better life.” Dressed for the festival in a smart black skirt and a high-necked blouse adorned with a cameo necklace, she is enjoying the lavish spectacle.
  • (19) Speaking at the launch of BT Sport , the telecoms company's lavishly funded challenge to Sky's iron grip on Premiership football viewing, Balding said prospects for the women's game were improving.
  • (20) In this lavish reimagining of Los Angeles, traffic jams only happen when the narrative demands them.

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.