nugacityn.

a1538 W. Holme Fall & Euill Successe Rebellion (1572) sig. I.ij^v Now this was their prophesie and their nugacitie, Without a word added, or a worde of minoritie: Foorth shall come a worme, an Aske with one eye... The Chicken shall the Capon slay, And after that shall be no May.

1653 H. More Second Lash of Alazonomastix 155 Such Arithmetical nugacities as are ordinarily recorded for his.

1668 H. More Divine Dialogues (1713) ii. ii. 90 Such Nugacities as are exploded even by the Theologers themselves.

1829 Q. Rev. 39 111 Throat-choking..nugacities of hyper-grammatical..absurdity.

a1834 S. T. Coleridge Lit. Remains (1838) III. 179 To confute the whims and superstitious nugacities of these Sermons.

1981 Times 26 Oct. 9/7 The Booker handout is a highly negligible nugacity.

1994 R. Davies Cunning Man 157 Nor had he been cast in Pomander Walk, a nugacity written by the industrious Louis Napoleon Parker.

1593 T. Bilson Perpetual Govt. Christes Church 278 Ful of follie, nugacitie, error.

a1612 J. Harington Brief View Church of Eng. in Nugæ Antiquæ (1804) II. 262 He knows such nugacitie becomes not his place.

1662 E. Stillingfleet Origines Sacræ i. iv. §10 Strabo seems to accuse Herodotus much of nugacity.

1676 H. More Remarks 2 Disc. 189 There is no nugacity at all in this.

1862 Sat. Rev. 13 719 Parr's general nugacity as an exegetical and polemical divine.

1942 P. Larkin Let. 19 Sept. in Sel. Lett. (1992) 44 I'm sorry this letter is so dull, but I do just bugger all and tend to stagnate. One gets obsessed with nugacity (you are bound to know what that means, you sod).

1955 Yale French Stud. No. 16. 111 How can Existentialism, a shocking philosophy, lend itself to the tedious nugacity of academic life?

1988 Representations Winter 46 Beaumont in his invocation completes the traditional assault on ‘trifling’ poetry by allying his poem not only with poverty and nugacity but with superstition.

1995 T. Killick IMF Programmes Developing Countries iii. 52 There is little evidence that Fund programmes impose heavy costs on the economies affected... Before we turn for explanations of this relative nugacity, however, there are two other points worth bringing out.