trippingness

Why this word is great

TRIPPINGNESS — noun. A tripping quality; movement in a light, dancing manner. From *tripping* (to step lightly, skip) + *-ness* (state or quality), a 16th-century coinage for the buoyant grace of a dancer’s footfall. Unlike *stumblingness* (which stutters, catches the toe on the world’s unevenness) or *clumsiness* (which drags like a sodden cloak), *trippingness* is the flick of a leaf skittering over cobblestones, the flicker of a minnow in sunlit shallows, the way a child’s laughter darts ahead of her down a hill—proof that levity, when quick enough, becomes a kind of flight.