Glee
noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Joy; happiness; great delight, especially from one's own good fortune or from another's misfortune. uncountable
"I watched with glee while your kings and queens fought for ten decades for the gods they made."
- 2 great merriment wordnet
- 3 Music; minstrelsy; entertainment. uncountable
- 4 malicious satisfaction wordnet
- 5 An unaccompanied part song for three or more solo voices, not necessarily merry. countable
"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."
- 1 To sing a glee (unaccompanied part song).
Example
More examples"Who's your favorite character on Glee?"
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.
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”).
Related phrases
More for "glee"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.