different between incivility vs uncivility

English

Etymology

From Middle French incivilité, from Late Latin incivilitas (“incivility”), from Latin incivilis (“impolite, uncivil”), from in- (privative prefix) + civilis (“belonging to a citizen, civic, political, urbane, courteous, civil”) (from civis (“a citizen”)).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?ns??v?l?ti/
• Hyphenation: in?ci?vil?i?ty

Noun

incivility (countable and uncountable, plural incivilities)

1. (uncountable) The state of being uncivil; lack of courtesy; rudeness in manner.

   Synonym: impoliteness

   • c. 1589, William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, Act IV, Scene 4,^[1]

     Courtezan. How say you now? is not your husband mad?

     Adriana. His incivility confirms no less.

   • 1668, David Lloyd, Memoires of the Lives, Actions, Sufferings, and Deaths of those Noble, Reverend, and Excellent Personages that suffered by Death, Sequestration, Decimation, and otherwise for the Protestant Religion, London: Samuel Speed, “The Life and Death of Robert Berkley,” p. 96,^[2]

     Beat on proud Billows, Boreas blow,

     Swell curled Waves, high as Jove’s roof,

     Your incivility doth show,

     That Innocence is tempest proof.

   • 1811, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 31,^[3]

     Little did Mr. Willoughby imagine, I suppose, when his looks censured me for incivility in breaking up the party, that I was called away to the relief of one whom he had made poor and miserable [...]

   • 1927, Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, Chapter 1,^[4]

     [...] she could not bear incivility to her guests, to young men in particular [...]

2. (countable) Any act of rudeness or ill-breeding.
   • 1632, George Sandys, Ovid’s Metamorphosis: Englished, mythologiz’d, and represented in figures, Oxford: John Lichfield, “Upon the Sixth Book of Ovids Metamorphosis,” p. 223,^[5]

     Latona, in her flight from Juno, is churlishly intreated by the Lycian pesants, and denied the publique benefit of water: for which incivility these bawling Clownes are changed into croaking froggs, and confined unto that Lake for ever.

   • 1748, Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, Volume I, Letter 4, p. 26,^[6]

     Mr. Lovelace, for three days together, sent twice each day to inquire after my brother’s health; and, altho’ he received rude, and even shocking returns, he thought fit, on the fourth day, to make in person the fame inquiries; and received still greater incivilities from my two uncles, who happen’d to be both there.

   • 1889, Sabine Baring-Gould, “A Face in the Dark” in Pennycomequicks, London: Spencer, Blackett & Hallam, Volume II, p. 54,^[7]

     When my poor Sidebottom was alive, if there had been any unpleasantness between us during the day [...] I have shaken him at night to wake him up, that he might receive my pardon for an incivility said or done.

3. (uncountable) Want of civilization; a state of rudeness or barbarism.

Related terms

• incivil

Translations

See also

• discourtesy
• disrespect
• impoliteness
• rudeness
• uncourteousness
• unmannerliness

References

• incivility in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• incivility in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

English

Alternative forms

• oncivility (rare, Scotland)

Etymology

un- +? civility

Noun

uncivility (usually uncountable, plural uncivilities)

1. (archaic) incivility; rudeness