[f. prec. + -ITY.] Circumstantial quality, attention to details, particularity.
1731–6. Bailey, Circumstantiality, the quality of that which is circumstantial.
1784. Steevens, in Boswell, Johnson, lxxx. Could … the many acts of humanity he performed … be displayed with equal circumstantiality.
1816. Scott, Old Mort., i. So much had his narratives the circumstantiality of an eye-witness.
1878. Morley, Diderot, I. 88. He sets forth the title with great circumstantiality, but no such book exists or ever did exist.
b. concr. A circumstantial matter, a detail.
1822. De Quincey, Confess. (1862), 88. Such trivial circumstantialities I notice. Ibid. (1854), Wks. (1862), IV. 101. The possibility of reconciling these incidents with other circumstantialities of the case.
† 2. ‘The appendage of circumstances, the state of anything as modified by circumstances.’ (The only sense in Johnson.)
