Delight

How to spell delight

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce delight

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does delight mean?

1. nounA feeling of great pleasure, or something that produces it.
2. verbTo please someone greatly, or to take great pleasure in something.

Delight in a sentence

• noun

  The children squealed with delight when the puppy arrived.

• verb

  The magician knew exactly how to delight a young audience.

• noun

  The dessert was a real delight after a long meal.

• verb

  The new menu is sure to delight regular customers.

Where does delight come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Delight came into English in the 1200s from the Old French verb 'delitier', meaning 'to please' or 'to charm', which descended from the Latin 'delectare', 'to allure' or 'to delight'. That Latin verb was itself a frequentative of 'delicere', built from 'de-' as an intensifier and 'lacere', meaning 'to entice' or 'to lure'. The same root lies behind the everyday words 'delicious' and 'delectable', which is a useful reminder that the idea at the heart of delight is being pleasurably drawn in. The original Middle English spelling was 'delit' or 'delite', faithfully reflecting its French and Latin source, with no 'gh' anywhere. The silent 'gh' was wrongly inserted around the 1500s by writers who modelled the word on genuinely native spellings like 'light', 'night' and 'sight'; this purely cosmetic change is exactly why the word now looks trickier than it sounds.

How the word is built

• de- (intensive, from Latin de-)
• light (from Latin lacere 'to entice'; the -gh- spelling was added later by false analogy with words like 'light' and 'night')