1. He is pale, dark, and authoritative, with the gravitas you might expect of a Booker prize winner.

2. Badger is a retired schoolmaster, rather short on gravitas.

3. First, he needs more gravitas.

4. His gravitas, offset with a flickering irony, gives the production a strong moral centre.

5. You acquire gravitas and project it like a cologne whenever you discuss the singular and laudable Salomon Brothers culture.

6. He has a gravitas that has not just been put on like a flashy waistcoat, nor indeed a Garrick Club tie.

7. He provides the intellectual thrust and gravitas of the arguments of those who oppose monetary and political union.

8. Therefore, Europe's relative gravitas and weight in both global affairs and American issues will proportionately decrease.

9. He brought a gravitas to the superhero that wiped away the camp and kitsch that had shrouded Batman in cobwebs.

10. The Presidents gave bipartisan gravitas to the campaign, and we needed all the help we could get.

11. Terry Pratchett's Discworld might not have the gravitas of other fantasy works, but it makes our list by virtue of being pure fun.

12. This is a wine of gravitas with layers upon layers of dark fruit coating fine tannins with an almost glycerol-like texture.

13. He's an effective enough politician but somehow he lacks the statesmanlike gravitas of a world leader.

14. The reined-in impatience which so often emanated from Ian was absent, Theodora's gravitas mitigated and Julia's social nervousness sedated.

15. Secretary of Labor. The little guy didn't have the gravitas to be Secretary of Treasury.

16. To start with, he took a bold step in making a high-budget epic in black and white, which was commercially risky but added a great deal of gravitas.

17. "You can't get a 25-year-old size 8 ballet dancer type body to move with the weight, the gravitas or the sheer cheerful spirit of a pregnant woman," she said.

18. The manager could well have been smart in buying Edwin van der Sar to bring gravitas.

19. Apple's products, along with Jobs' personality traits, are what gave him the gravitas that made his keynotes Momentous Events, with all eyes on Steve.

20. He's the right age, he's tall, he has the presence and gravitas.

21. We like the convenience of looking up a word on the fly on the screen, and the gravitas of doing it, not on the fly, from one of the O.E.D.'s 20 volumes.

22. The second: when you do come down strongly on someone's side, refer to a higher authority to give yourself the requisite gravitas.