different between flair vs vivacity

English

Etymology

From Middle English flayre, from Old French flair (“scent, odour”), from flairier (“to reek, smell”), from Latin fl?gr?, dissimilated variation of fr?gr? (“emit a sweet smell”, verb). More at fragrant.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /fl???/
• (US) enPR: flâr, IPA^(key): /fl???/
• Rhymes: -??(?)
• Homophone: flare

Noun

flair (countable and uncountable, plural flairs)

1. A natural or innate talent or aptitude.

   Synonyms: gift, knack, talent

   • 1999, Lucy Honig, The Truly Needy And Other Stories, University of Pittsburgh Press (?ISBN), page 73:

     The cafard. The cockroach. The French certainly had a flair for labeling their unhappiness. Long ago he had begun to visualize this nagging misery as the insect the word also named.

2. Distinctive style or elegance.

   Synonyms: elan, elegance, grace, panache, style
3. (obsolete) Smell; odor.
4. (obsolete) Olfaction; sense of smell.

Translations

Verb

flair (third-person singular simple present flairs, present participle flairing, simple past and past participle flaired)

1. (transitive) To add flair.

Anagrams

• filar, frail

French

Etymology

From flairer, from Latin flagrare (“to blow”). Cognate to Portuguese cheiro.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fl??/

Noun

flair m (plural flairs)

1. sense of smell
2. (by extension) intuition, sixth sense

Further reading

• “flair” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Anagrams

• rifla

Old French

Noun

flair m (oblique plural flairs, nominative singular flairs, nominative plural flair)

1. smell; odor
2. sense of smell

Scots

Alternative forms

• fluir

Etymology

From Old English fl?r.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fler/

Noun

flair (plural flairs)

1. floor
   • 2008, James Kelman, Kieron Smith, Boy, Penguin 2009, p. 140:

     He skited it over the flair maybe if it was a jotter and it was you to go and get it.

Westrobothnian

Etymology

From Old Norse fleiri, from Proto-Germanic *flaizô.

Adjective

flair

1. More; comparative of marge (“many,”) and mang.
2. Many, several.

English

Etymology

vivac(ious) +? -ity, borrowed from Latin v?v?cit?s.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /v??væs?ti/
• Hyphenation: vi?va?ci?ty

Noun

vivacity (countable and uncountable, plural vivacities)

1. The quality or state of being vivacious.
   • 1612, Francis Bacon, Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, “Of Youth and Age,”^[1]

     But reposed natures may do well in youth. […] On the other side, heat and vivacity in age, is an excellent composition for business.

   • 1738, David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part I, Section III. Of the Ideas of the Memory and the Imagination,^[2]

     We find by experience, that when any impression has been present with the mind, it again makes its appearance there as an idea; and this it may do after two different ways: either when in its new appearance it retains a considerable degree of its first vivacity, and is somewhat intermediate betwixt an impression and an idea: or when it entirely loses that vivacity, and is a perfect idea.

   • 1766, Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, Chapter 1,^[3]

     The one entertained me with her vivacity when I was gay, the other with her sense when I was serious.

   • 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Chapter 2,^[4]

     In the name of truth and common sense, why should not one woman acknowledge that she can take more exercise than another? or, in other words, that she has a sound constitution; and why to damp innocent vivacity, is she darkly to be told, that men will draw conclusions which she little thinks of?

   • 1819, Walter Scott, The Bride of Lammermoor, Chapter 5,^[5]

     Some secret sorrow, or the brooding spirit of some moody passion, had quenched the light and ingenuous vivacity of youth in a countenance singularly fitted to display both […]

   • 1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, Chapter 2,^[6]

     […] an extraordinary observer might have seen that the chin was very pointed and pronounced; that the big eyes were full of spirit and vivacity; that the mouth was sweet-lipped and expressive; that the forehead was broad and full; in short, our discerning extraordinary observer might have concluded that no commonplace soul inhabited the body of this stray woman-child […]

Synonyms

• liveliness
• vivaciousness

Translations

Anagrams

• vacivity