mysticity
nounEtymology From mystic + -ity, after French mysticité.
1
The quality of being mystic or mystical.
- The Count de Sinzendorf has ſhewn all Europe, that in the moſt enlightened age, perſeverance ſupported by enthuſiaſm and devotion, could recall that zeal, that Miſticity, thoſe extraordinary follies, which one would think proper only for the barbarous and dark ages.1753, [dedication signed by Goma de Palajos], Reflections of *****: Being a Series of Political Maxims, Illustrated by General History, as Well as by Variety of Authentic Anecdotes (Never Published Before) […], London: […] D. Wilson, and T. Durham, […], page 145:
- I will endeavour to “make note” of their tenets, though many of them escaped me through their mysticity.1834, Thomas Medwin, The Angler in Wales, or Days and Nights of Sportsmen, volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], page 1:
4 more examples
- For three days it had been drifting. The land lay white and still under a lowering, threatening snow-cloud of dark indigo blue. It is a sky that is indescribable in its effect, and that effect is heightened by the unbroken whiteness that lies everywhere underneath it. Has any artist ever given us its mysticity, its strange gloom, its ominousness?1884, Mary Linskill, Between the Heather and the Northern Sea, volume III, London: Richard Bentley and Son, […], pages 348–349:
- Flavian had caught, in fact, something of the rhyming cadence, the sonorous organ-music of the medieval Latin, and therewithal something of its unction and mysticity of spirit.1885, Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean: His Sensations and Ideas, 2nd edition, London: Macmillan and Co., page 115:
- And when somebody, it never was known who, but it was said to have been Olive, suggested that it was all fate, for Violet had played the beggar-maid to King Cophetua, the brain-excitement grew acute as that attendant on solemn rites,—and, overcome with mysticity, the women lay prone before the coincidence.1886, George Moore, A Drama in Muslin: A Realistic Novel (Vizetelly’s One-Volume Novels), London: Vizetelly & Co., […], pages 265–266:
- That is all: the touch of “idea” in the picture—of what is unusual a little—is the introduction of that guiding angel near the child, the mysticity of the place being merely Leonardesque—accidental to the painter’s mind, its own scenery;—[…]1891, William M[oney] Hardinge, “A Note on the Louvre Sonnets of Rossetti”, in Temple Bar, with Which Is Incorporated “Bentley’s Miscellany.” A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers., volume 91, London: Richard Bentley & Son, […]; New York, N.Y.: Willmer and Rogers; Paris: Galignani, page 434:
- Synonyms
- mysticness