Examples of “velleity” in a Sentence

noun A very weak wish, so faint that no one ever acts on it.

• The debate in the House of Lords would convert the impartial listener from any velleity towards single-chamber government. — The Times, column A (1919)
• The difficulty of getting here prevented people from coming on a velleity. — Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age … (1995)
• This connoisseuse of “splendid weaknesses”, run not by any lust or even velleity but by vacuum: by the absence of human hope. — Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)