[f. FELICITY + -OUS.] Characterized by felicity.
1. a. Indicative of or marked by extreme happiness; blissful, rare.
1824. Dibdin, Libr. Comp., 606. I am well aware of that felicitous palpitation of heart.
1886. Ruskin, Præterita, I. i. 29. In the refinement of their highly educated, unpretending, benevolent, and felicitous lives, remain in my memory more like the figures in a beautiful story than realities.
† b. Fortunate, prosperous, successful. Obs.
1735. [see FELICIOUS].
2. Of an action, expression, manner, etc.: Admirably suited to the occasion; strikingly apt or appropriate.
1789. P. Stuart, Lett. to Burns, 5 Aug. His manner was so felicitous, that he enraptured every person around him.
1803. Paley, Nat. Theol., xxvi. (1803), 519. A felicitous adaptation of the organ to the object, will be confessed by any one, who may happen to have experienced that vitiation of taste which frequently occurs in fevers, when every taste is irregular, and every one bad.
1839. Carlyle, Chartism (1858), 3. A Reform Ministry has ‘put down … Chartism’ in the most felicitous effectual manner.
1848. S. C. Bartlett, Egypt to Pal., xxvii. (1879), 528. We esteemed it a felicitous rounding off of our journey that the remainder of our way, till we sailed from the Golden Horn, was a constant contact with our American missionaries.
1866. Felton, Anc. & Mod. Gr., II. x. 190. This striking essay, which would have made in modern times a capital article for a quarterly review, abounds in elegant and acute criticism, and felicitous comparisons.
1878. R. W. Dale, Lect. Preach., v. 120. Sometimes you will get a subject for a sermon, sometimes a strong, epigrammatic statement of a great ethical truth which you will be glad to quote, sometimes a felicitous illustration.
b. Of persons: Happy or pleasantly apt in expression, manner, or style.
1821. Lamb, Elia, Ser. I., Old Benchers I. T. Twopenny, good-humoured, but thin, and felicitous in jests upon his own figure.
1814. Dibdin, Libr. Comp., 765. The witty, the felicitous, the inimitable Fontaine.
1841. W. Spalding, Italy & It. Isl., II. 389. With no great originality in general principles, he [Pagano] is often ingenious, sometimes singularly felicitous, in striking out insulated views; the mass of knowledge which he rears up as a support for his theories is exceedingly apposite and varied; and although there is often something that is overcharged, and not a little that is diffuse, yet, for the power of picturesque description and vivid narration, very few writers of history can be compared to him.
Hence Felicitousness, the quality or state of being felicitous.
1727. in Bailey, vol. II.; and in mod. Dicts.
