Word of the Day Archive
Monday December 24, 2007
amity \AM-uh-tee\ , noun:
Friendship; friendly relations, especially between nations.
For at least the first two years of the war, as a Confederate soldier and writer, John Esten Cooke, phrased it, there were "pitched battles once or twice a year," in which the two sides spent all day killing each other, "and then relapsed into gentlemanly repose and amity."
-- Stephen W. Sears, "Valor Couldn't Save Them", New York Times, July 5, 1987
The precise nature of their relationship cannot now be uncovered, and might well have resisted analysis at the time; it remained a matter of mutual services and obligations, the filaments of which over the years created a network of amity and trust.
-- Peter Ackroyd, The Life of Thomas More
He regards Cordell Hull as the bright particular star of the Roosevelt Administration and heartily approves the Secretary of State's efforts to promote international amity and reciprocal trade.
-- Cleveland Rodgers, "Robert Moses", The Atlantic, February 1939
Amity comes from Old French-Medieval French amistié, amisté, ultimately from Latin amicus, "friendly, a friend," from amare, "to love."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for amity
