Delight
noun, verb ·Common ·Middle school level
Definitions
- 1 Joy; pleasure. countable, uncountable
"A fool hath no delight in understanding."
- 2 something or someone that provides a source of happiness wordnet
- 3 Something that gives great joy or pleasure. countable, uncountable
"Greensleeves was all my joy / Greensleeves was my delight, […]"
- 4 a feeling of extreme pleasure or satisfaction wordnet
- 1 To give delight to; to affect with great pleasure; to please highly.
"Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds."
- 2 take delight in wordnet
- 3 To have or take great pleasure. intransitive
"A ſclaunderous tunge, a tunge of a ſkolde, Worketh more miſchiefe than can be tolde; That, if I wiſt not to be controlde, Yet ſomwhat to ſay I dare well be bolde,"
- 4 give pleasure to or be pleasing to wordnet
- 5 hold spellbound wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Censorious people delight in casting blame."
Etymology
Attested from the 13th century, from Middle English delite, from Old French deleiter, deliter, from Latin dēlectāre (“to delight, please”), frequentative of dēlicere (“to allure, entice”), from dē- (“away”) + laciō (“I lure, I deceive”), from Proto-Italic *lakjō (“to draw, pull”), of unknown ultimate origin. Doublet of delect. Related with delectation, delicate, delicious and dilettante. The modern unetymological spelling (instead of expected delite) is influenced by light and other words ending in -ight, such as might, bright, etc. The -gh- may also be an attempt to represent the Latin -c-; compare obsolete indight for indict.
Related phrases
More for "delight"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.