infelicity

English

Etymology

From in- +‎ felicity, from Latin infelicitas.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ɪsɪti

Noun

infelicity (countable and uncountable, plural infelicities)

1. (uncountable) The condition of being infelicitous.
   • 2007, Andrew Zurcher, Spenser's legal language: law and poetry in early modern England, page 4:

     The infelicity of this shift of subject only becomes apparent, again retrospectively, in line eight, directly after the reader's encounter with yet another inscrutable Spenserism […]

2. (countable) Something that is infelicitous or inappropriate
   • 2007 October 24, Jeffrey Alan Barrett, “Approximate Truth and Descriptive Nesting”, in Erkenntnis, volume 68, number 2, →DOI:

     Returning to our own epistemic situation, we do not know the sense in which quantum mechanics and relativity will be taken to be approximately true after their descriptive infelicities are addressed.

Antonyms

• (antonym(s) of “condition”): felicity

Translations

Something that is infelicitous or inappropriate

• Bulgarian: злополучие (bg) n (zlopolučie)