jollity
Americannoun
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jolly or merry mood, condition, or activity; gaiety.
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jollities, jolly festivities.
noun
Synonym Usage
See mirth.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of jollity
1250–1300; Middle English jolite, from Old French, equivalent to joli(f) “gay” ( see jolly) + -te -ty 2
Explanation
Use the noun jollity to describe having fun and being in an extremely good mood, like the jollity you feel when you are with your best friends at your favorite amusement park. You can see the word jolly in jollity and that is a big clue that it means "full of cheer and good will." We might say that Jolly Old Saint Nicholas — Santa Claus — is the king of jollity. But you can join his court — you are the picture of jollity when you are laughing uncontrollably with good friends or whooping it up at a Country Western dance. We are talking mirth and merriment: that's jollity.
Vocabulary lists containing jollity
100 SAT Words Beginning with "J," "K," and "L"
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Tolkien Reading Day, List 11
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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
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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.
See Examples For:
Still, there is profit and occasional jollity in brisk recapitulations of seminal events by a fluent storyteller with an eye for telling detail and apposite quotation.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 16, 2025
As the Lib Dems gather in Bournemouth this weekend for their annual get together, there will be a certain amount of understandable jollity.
From BBC ● Sep. 20, 2025
Around the time of February’s Grammy Awards, Shaboozey appeared to have tired — reasonably! — of “Tipsy’s” rootsy jollity.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 27, 2025
“Yeah, I’ll give you a sticker for free,” Massry says, with the forced jollity of a bartender at 2 a.m.
From Slate ● Oct. 26, 2024
Oh, along at first I missed being a night owl—the tunes, the jollity.
From "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote
Stan's last surviving relative became coy and refused to enter into the jollities.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 15, 2011
A great outpouring of grief and anger and sorrow and doubt had to take place before the certainties and jollities of the mature writer could come into being.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 6, 2005
Pranks and jollities slide from gentle flippancy to hurly-burly burlesque.
From Time Magazine Archive
His quips, and cranks, his whims, and jollities, and jocund mischief, are but the effervescences of exuberant young life, the wild music of the mountain stream.
From Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales by Taylor, Robert L.
There is a distinction in not showing one's self often; but it is provoking to hear of the frolics and jollities which go on every day and every night, and from which I am banished.
From London Pride Or When the World Was Younger by Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
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.
