jollity
Americannoun
PLURAL
jollities-
jolly or merry mood, condition, or activity; gaiety.
-
jollities, jolly festivities.
noun
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012Related Words
See mirth.
Etymology
Origin of jollity
1250–1300; Middle English jolite, from Old French, equivalent to joli(f) “gay” ( jolly ) + -te -ty 2
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.
The result produced the forced jollity of a room in which the audience is strenuously urged to “sing along now!”
From Seattle Times
Both are also generally spared the over-emphatic jollity that Dehnert has evidently encouraged as a way of plowing through difficult passages of dialogue and forcing the weird jokes to bloom.
From New York Times
Nothing goes quite as planned, and Silvio’s irrepressible jollity is no match for the tides and crosscurrents of postwar Italy.
From New York Times
And the bonding agent that incites all this frankly ferocious jollity is a great big CG crocodile answering to the name of Lyle who lives in the attic of that brownstone.
From Seattle Times
But there’s an unhinged jollity to it, too.
From New York Times
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.