sunny
Americanadjective
-
full of or exposed to sunlight
-
radiating good humour
-
of or resembling the sun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of sunny
Explanation
Sunny means shining with bright sunlight, like a beautiful sunny Saturday at the beach. It can also mean cheerful, like your sunny, upbeat best friend. When the sun is shining, it's a sunny day, and when you're smiling and friendly, you're sunny too. Sunny has been used in this figurative way since the 16th century, and in the 1830s, sunny side came to mean "optimistic outlook." However, if you order your eggs sunny side up, it just means you'll get two fried eggs with bright yellow, runny yolks.
Vocabulary lists containing sunny
Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Suffixes: -y
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Spelling Practice 1, Unit 6
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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:
Scientists stress that warm, sunny weather is not automatically bad for bumblebees.
From BBC ● Jul. 21, 2026
Cooler temperatures are on the way for some parts of the UK after a first half of summer dominated by warm, sunny and largely dry weather.
From BBC ● Jul. 19, 2026
Farage again powered through after a protester tossed a milkshake over him when he first ran for election in this sunny seaside town, eventually winning.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 12, 2026
In case you don’t make it to the end, “Along the Way” is a duet between Laga’aia’s sunny new Moana and her predecessor, Auli’i Cravalho, who voiced the original character.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 9, 2026
My mood is as light and sunny as a lemon meringue pie.
From "A Place at the Table" by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan
Before relocating to a quieter, sunnier place by the beach, I lived in and around New York City for nearly a decade.
From Salon ● Jun. 3, 2026
Representatives of the U.S. government also projected a sunnier outlook in public and in private.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 2026
The strength and amount of direct sunshine available is always changing with sunnier longer days giving a greater warming potential than cloudy dull ones.
From BBC ● Mar. 19, 2026
While there will be lots of cloud on Tuesday with rain at times in Northern Ireland and western Scotland, it will become sunnier across England and Wales into the afternoon.
From BBC ● Mar. 16, 2026
This room was sunnier, with an entire line of windows to see outside.
From "March Forward, Girl" by Melba Pattillo Beals
High UV levels are also expected in the sunniest spots.
From BBC ● Jun. 12, 2026
The UK's hottest and sunniest spring still stands as 2025 with spring 2026 ranked as third warmest and fourth sunniest.
From BBC ● Jun. 1, 2026
The school operates in Redding, she said, because it is one of the sunniest cities in the United States, allowing for more than 300 flying days per year.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 27, 2026
But solar-powered electricity rose by nearly a third on 2024 levels, helped by the UK's sunniest year on record and the expansion of solar panels around the country.
From BBC ● Jan. 2, 2026
To exit onto the street, I point my Nikes toward the sunniest doorway and lean back, lifted by the locals.
From "Better Nate Than Ever" by Tim Federle
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.
