levity
noun

- humour or lack of seriousness, especially during a serious occasion (Cambridge Dictionary)

- the treatment of a serious matter with humour or lack of due respect (Oxford Dictionary)

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ORIGIN

mid. 16th century: from Latin ‘levitas’, from ‘levis’ light.

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INAPPROPRIATE LEVITY

Oscar Wilde began a lecture tour of America at the start of 1882. Upon his arrival at US Customs he was asked if he had anything to declare. Wilde answered "I have nothing to declare but my genius"

History only records the success of Wilde’s tour, not the custom officer’s reaction to his levity.

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Elisabeth Jungmann once commented to Max Beerbohm how much she would like to have met the great scientist Isaac Newton (famed for his formulation of the Universal Law of Gravitation). When Max replied that he would not have understood the man, Elisabeth insisted.

“He would have liked you,” she said. “Yes,” Max agreed: “I would have taught him the law of levity.”

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SYNONYMS

buffoonery, clowning, facetiousness, flippancy, frivolity, frivolousness, irreverence, jesting, jocularity, jokiness, joking, jollity, joviality, LEVITY, light-heartedness, mirth, silliness, tomfoolery, triviality, unseriousness waggishness, whimsy

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PRACTICE OWAD in an English conversation, say something like:

“We need to give Jacko some feedback, his LEVITY during recruitment interviews is becoming embarrassing.”

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Paul Smith