glee

noun
/ɡliː/

Etymology

From Middle English gle, from Old English glēo, glīġ, glēow, glīw (“glee, pleasure, mirth, play, sport; music; mockery”), from Proto-West Germanic *glīw, from Proto-Germanic *glīwą (“joy, mirth”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰlew- (“to joke, make fun, enjoy”). Cognate with Scots gle, glie, glew (“game, play, sport, mirth, joy, rejoicing, entertainment, melody, music”), Icelandic glý (“joy, glee, gladness”), Ancient Greek χλεύη (khleúē, “joke, jest, scorn”). A poetic word in Middle English, the word was obsolete by 1500, but revived late 18c.

  1. derived from *gʰlew- — “to joke, make fun, enjoy
  2. inherited from *glīwą — “joy, mirth
  3. inherited from *glīw
  4. inherited from glēo
  5. inherited from gle

Definitions

  1. Joy

    Joy; happiness; great delight, especially from one's own good fortune or from another's misfortune.

    • I watched with glee while your kings and queens fought for ten decades for the gods they made.
  2. Music

    Music; minstrelsy; entertainment.

  3. An unaccompanied part song for three or more solo voices, not necessarily merry.

    • Sometimes they had glees, when Captain Strong’s chest was of vast service, and he boomed out in a prodigious bass, of which he was not a little proud.
  4. + 1 more definition
    1. To sing a glee (unaccompanied part song).

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for glee. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA