[ad. L. latinitātem, f. Latīnus: see LATIN and -ITY.]
1. The manner of speaking or writing Latin; Latin (with reference to its construction or style).
In the first quot. the sense of the word is doubtful, and the text insecure.
1619. in Crt. & Times Jas. I. (1848), II. 172. One Shingleton … who preaching in Pauls … glanced, they say, scandalously at him [Bacon], and his Latinities, as he called them.
a. 1656. Bp. Hall, Rem. Wks. (1660), 241. The Romans expressed the womans marriage by, nubere, which signifies to vail…. Neither doubt I but before all latinity was hatched this was alluded to by Abimelech, Genes. 20. 16.
1661. Boyle, Style of Script. (1675), 148. That cardinal … that said, that once indeed he had read the Bible, but if he were to do it again, ’twould lose him all his Latinity.
1781. Gibbon, Decl. & F., xlvii. II. 738. His latinity is pure.
1826. Miss Mitford, Village, Ser. III. (1863), 519. [He] used to … growl as he compounded the medicines over the bad latinity of the prescriptions.
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res. (1858), 81. I undertook to compose his Epitaph … which, however, for an alleged defect of Latinity … still remains unengraven.
1865. Merivale, Rom. Emp., VIII. lxiv. 100. The last remains we possess of classical Latinity are the biographies of the later emperors.
2. Roman Law. The status of a Latin citizen.
1880. Muirhead, Gaius, I. § 22, note 1. On the nature of colonial latinity see Savigny. Ibid., § 96. Latinity is either the greater or the lesser. There is the greater latinity when those who … fill some high office or magistracy, acquire Roman citizenship along with their parents, wives, and children; the lesser, when those who … hold a magisterial or other high office, themselves alone attain to citizenship.
