Gravitas

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:33 PM -0400 7/26/00, Fred Shapiro wrote:
>On Wed, 26 Jul 2000, Elizabeth Gibbens wrote:
>
>>  My Random House Webster's says that "gravitas" was first attested in
>>  U.S. English in the 1920s.
>
>The OED's first use of _gravitas_ is dated 1924.  Here is an earlier one:
>
>1869 _North American Review_ 108: 443  It could not be otherwise, with the
>Roman _gravitas_ on one side, and the _Graeca levitas_ on the other.
>
I wonder, though, when the term began to be used for a character
trait in modern individuals rather than ancient cultures and their
embodiment.  Three of the four cites in the Cornell Making of America
database have a similar contrast to the one in Fred's citation (Roman
gravitas vs. Greek levitas or charis), while the one that does have a
reasonably current sense of gravitas as a character trait in a modern
politician, statesman, or literary figure--a eulogy for someone named
Dugald Stewart in the 1858 volume of The Living Age--embeds it in a
longer Latin phrase:
*************
In general company his manner bordered on reserve, but it was the
_comitate condita gravitas_, and belonged more to the general weight
and authority of his character than to any reluctance to take his
share in the cheerful intercourse of social life.

(The Living Age vol. 57, issue 732, p. 794)
*************

Much as I enjoy the bit about the cheerful intercourse of social
life, though, I fear there's a long road to travel from this
particular use of gravitas, or the ones in Fred's and the MoA quotes
relating to an attribute of Roman culture, to the quality that
everyone seems to think that George W. and Clinton may not have
enough of and that Dick Cheney and Al Gore are dripping with an
overdose of.

larry