merry
1 Americanadjective
-
full of cheerfulness or gaiety; joyous in disposition or spirit.
a merry little man.
- Synonyms:
- glad, cheery, frolicsome, blithesome, blithe, happy
- Antonyms:
- sad
-
laughingly happy; mirthful; festively joyous; hilarious.
a merry time at the party.
- Antonyms:
- solemn
-
Archaic. causing happiness; pleasant; delightful.
idioms
noun
adjective
-
cheerful; jolly
-
very funny; hilarious
-
informal slightly drunk
-
archaic delightful
-
to revel; be festive
-
informal to disturb greatly; disrupt
Pronunciation
See Mary.
Other Word Forms
- merrily adverb
- merriness noun
- overmerrily adverb
- overmerriness noun
- overmerry adjective
- unmerrily adverb
- unmerry adjective
Etymology
Origin of merry
First recorded before 900; Middle English meri(e),myrie, murie, Old English myr(i)ge, mer(i)ge “pleasant, delightful”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
I imagined that my mother had looked a lot like Ida with her black hair and merry smile.
From Literature
In a stressful, often cruel environment, it felt less like a performance, and more like a merry rebuke.
There was no merrier illustration of the varieties of human experience than this runaway French hit, which was, like “Don Quixote,” translated into English by Smollett in 1748.
Motin had led jurors on a "merry dance" in his evidence, which was an "exercise in inventive distraction", Mr Justice Baker said.
From BBC
And if you had that kind of a mother — or better, if you are that kind of a mother — the merry derangement O’Hara brought to her performances was soul-satisfying.
From Salon
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
