[ad. late L. jocunditās, f. jocund-us JOCUND: cf. OF. jocond-, jocundite, It. giocondità.]
1. Jocund quality or condition; mirthfulness, gaiety; mirth, merriment, glee.
c. 1420. Pallad. on Husb., III. 1121. Vngreyned grape in high iocundite Me may suppe of.
c. 1510. Barclay, Mirr. Gd. Manners (1570), E iij. But mingle so in measure mirth and iocunditie.
1560. Rolland, Crt. Venus, III. 661. Iudas … With Thamar lay in his Iocunditie.
1685. Baxter, Paraphr. N. T., John ii. 9. Marriages among the Jews were celebrated with great Feasting, where moderate jocundity was thought seasonable.
1764. Mem. G. Psalmanazar, 160. I have seen many of them go up to the gallows … with a seeming jocundity, as if they were mounting the guard.
1884. J. Hawthorne, Fort. Fool, I. xviii. 127. He overflowed with jocundity, though he was neither a wit nor a humorist.
b. A merry act or saying; a pleasantry.
a. 1734. North, Exam., I. ii. § 27 (1740), 43. The more Liberties he [Shaftsbury] took in the way of Pleasures and Jocundities … the more acceptable he was to the King.
† 2. Pleasure, delight, joy, happiness (of a high or spiritual kind). Obs.
c. 1450. trans. De Imitatione, III. lii. 124. Noon anxiete, blisful iocundite, swete companye & plesant to beholde.
1492. Ryman, Poems, lxxxii. 7, in Archiv Stud. neu. Spr., LXXXII. 251. In blisse with me thy place shall be Replete with alle iocundite.
1628. J. Hume, Jewes Deliv., v. 76. He is joy and jocunditie to such as mourne.
