ludicrity

English

Etymology

From ludicr(ous) +‎ -ity.

Noun

ludicrity (uncountable)

1. The quality of being ludicrous.

   Synonyms: ludicrosity, ludicrousness

   • 1777, H[enry] Hodgson, “Letter I.”, in Letters to Mrs. Kindersley, Lincoln: […] W. Wood. Mr. Wilkie […]; and Mr. Crowder […], London: Mess. Merril’s at Cambridge, published 1778, page 6:

     Pomp and pageantry have too much of the puppet ſhew to excite any ſentiments in the human breaſt, but thoſe of aſtoniſhment, ridicule, and ludicrity.

   • 1835, Greg Pullin, chapter IV, in Henry, the Recluse of Devon: or, His First Visit. A Tale from Life., London: […] John Bennett, […], page 72:

     Strangers were approaching at the report, and Archer was persuaded to fly, but this he sternly refused, and they proceeded to examine the wounded man, who ferociously persisted that he was dying, and if loss of blood was any indication, he certainly was dying: but even in those moments their gravity almost forsook them, when they saw ludicrity degrading the principles of manhood, and bombast and honor, like a bubble in the air, vanishing before their eyes.

   • 1860 March 17, F. R. I., “The Fifth Act in a Life Drama. Douglas Jerrold.”, in The Players: “The Abstract and Brief Chronicles of the Time.”, page 93, column 2:

     With Rochefoucault he held that “Flattery was a sort of base coin to which our vanity gave currency;” and he battered to shapeless ludicrity every piece that came in his way, and with a gusto, delightful in its originality and truthfulness.

   • 1893 August 26, “Hydrocephalous Isle of Wight Nupkinses”, in Food and Sanitation, volume III, page 249, column 2:

     A little examination of the glaring absurdity of this defence, the ludicrity of which, by the way, never appeared to suggest itself to the Bench, shows, that supposing the rainfall was even one-tenth of an inch per hour, the amount that could possibly get into the can in twenty-five minutes, if the lid were entirely open, would be less than 0·05 inch of water.

   • 1894, Wilfrid Woollam, “En Route”, in With the Help of the Angels: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers […], page 122:

     However, she refrained from smiling, to save her husband, in these new poses of domestic virtue and lofty resolution, from tumbling into ludicrity and hurting himself with the fall.

   • 1898, Jack London, “A Dream Image”, in Complete Works of Jack London, Delphi Classics, published 2011:

     And she was appalled at the absurdity, the ludicrity of the ideals she had builded or the tenets she had held in her previous existence.

   • 1916, Hamilton Literary Magazine, volume 51, page 351:

     All the ludicrity to which the Y. M. C. A. is subject, if you leave out the evangelists, may be laid at their door.

   • 1940, Journal of Social Studies, page 61:

     The ludicrity of the “cigarette smugglers” who were arrested seeking to avoid New York’s cigarette tax touched that part of the public’s funny bone that makes the difference between the American public and a totalitarian public.

   • 1960, R[obert] L[ionel] Fanthorpe, “Lunar Establishment”, in Satellite, London: Gollancz, published 2014, →ISBN:

     THERE was tremendous tension aboard the British rocket as Dai Thomas, clad in his space suit, made his way to the air lock. Clutching the deadly Leinster rockets in his arms, he looked for all the world like some uncouth metal-clad engineer about to set telegraph poles up in their sockets beside peaceful English roads. The ludicrity of the thought caused a smile to flash across John James’ enigmatic mouth.

   • 1990, Akintola J[osephus] G[ustavus] Wyse, “Background to politics in the twentieth century”, in H. C. Bankole-Bright and Politics in Colonial Sierra Leone, 1919–1958 (African Studies Series; 64), Cambridge, Cambs: Cambridge University Press, published 2002, →ISBN, page 17:

     But this, their ‘Englishness’, has called forth disparaging remarks about ‘Black Englishmen’, more often than not despised by ‘puritanic’ Englishmen for copying the English badly. The ludicrity of referring to England as ‘home’ has of course been the subject of many sneering comments in a number of works.

   • 2005, Manzur Murshed, Broken Milestones, Sarasota, Fla.: FLF Press, →ISBN, page 57:

     She purrs into my ear and kisses me on my neck and keeps her lips pressed against my neck. My resolve shatters. / “You are Sinbad the sailor and I am the old man. You will have to carry me till I decide to get down. You understand?” / I laugh aloud at the ludicrity of the situation. / “OK,” I say. “I won’t go. Get off my back.” / She slides off my back and comes round to face me.

   • 2019, Elizabeth Mackinlay, “A-Way of Writing, the Way it is Written”, in Critical Writing for Embodied Approaches: Autoethnography, Feminism and Decoloniality, Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, page 9:

     “Cixous”, I think and wonder, “who are you?” I know even before it leaves my lips that my question is ignorance masked as innocence. / I ask again, “Cixous, who are you? Who are you in-relation to writing, to my writing?” / She easily sees through my thin disguise and laughs raucously at the ludicrity, “This is why I never ask myself, ‘who am I’ (qui suis-je?) I ask myself ‘who are I?’ (qui sont-je?)—an unstranslatable^[sic] phrase. Who can say who I are, how many I are, which is the most of my I’s?”