INANITY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Inanity

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noun

Inanity n. (pl. inanities)

Inanition; void space; vacuity; emptiness.

Lack of seriousness; aimlessness; frivolity.

An inane, useless thing or pursuit; a vanity; a silly object; chiefly in pl.; as, the inanities of the world.

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Etymology of 'Inanity'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Inanity" Quotes from Famous Books

... from winch all living things in the air, on the earth, or in the depths of the boundless ocean, whether animal or vegetable, draw far the greater part of their nutriment. We can never reach the surface of this atmospheric ocean, for that would be for us a region of inanity and death; but there is scarcely a doubt that we shall freely use it in the future for purposes of locomotion, at the same time that we breathe and assimilate it as the very pabulum and substance ...

— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... he spoke the truth, and that it was impossible for him to convey it in any other than his natural manner; but between the shock and the singular influence of that manner she could at first only say, "You don't mean it!" fully conscious of the utter inanity of the remark, and that it seemed scarcely less ...

— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... had complied, accompanying herself on the ukulele, she suggested his weird "Cowboy's Lament." In some inexplicable way of love, she had come to like her husband's one song. Because he sang it, she liked its inanity and monotonousness; and most of all, it seemed to her, she loved his hopeless and adorable flatting of every note. She could even sing with him, flatting as accurately and deliciously as he. Nor did she undeceive him in his ...

— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... d'Angennes and her sister Angelique attained an age to divide their mother's authority in the salon, its sentiment grew quintessential, and its taste was subtilised well-nigh to inanity. They censured Polyeucte; they found Chapelain's unhappy epic "perfectly beautiful, but excessively tiresome"; they laid their heads together over Descartes' Discours de la Methode, and profoundly admired the philosopher; they were enraptured ...

— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... into degradation: he cannot elevate her without at the same time elevating himself. Let us cast our eyes over the globe! Let us observe those two great divisions of the human race, the East and the West. Half the old world remains in a state of inanity, under the oppression of a rude civilization: the women there are slaves; the other advances in equalization and intelligence: the women there are ...

— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

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