glee.
Joy; happiness; great delight, especially from one's own good fortune or from another's misfortune.
Meaning & usage
Joy; happiness; great delight, especially from one's own good fortune or from another's misfortune.
Music; minstrelsy; entertainment.
An unaccompanied part song for three or more solo voices, not necessarily merry.
Where this word comes from
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.
To sing a glee (unaccompanied part song).
Where this word comes from
From Middle English gleen, glewen, from Old English glēowian (“to sing, play an instrument, jest”), from Proto-West Germanic *glīwōn, from Proto-Germanic *glīwōną. Cognate with Icelandic glýja (“to be gleeful”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.