Glee

How to spell glee

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce glee

What does glee mean?

1. nounGreat delight or lively, often mischievous, joy.

Glee in a sentence

• The children opened their presents with obvious glee.

• She rubbed her hands together in glee when the deal was confirmed.

Where does glee come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Glee comes straight from the Old English word gleo (also spelled gliw or gleow), which meant mirth, play, entertainment, and especially music or minstrelsy. In Anglo-Saxon halls a 'gleoman' was a professional entertainer or minstrel, so the word originally carried a strong musical and performing sense rather than the pure emotion we mean today. The root is Germanic and is related to older words for fun and merriment, and some scholars link it to a shared idea of something that gladdens or brightens. Over the medieval period the musical thread survived in the technical term for a part-song called a glee, sung by several unaccompanied voices, which is why we still speak of a 'glee club'. The everyday meaning narrowed and intensified into lively, often slightly mischievous delight, the sense most people reach for now. The spelling is refreshingly honest: the long vowel is simply written as a double e, so the main thing to remember is that there is no silent letter or tricky ending hiding in it.

How the word is built

• glee (a single Old English root, gleo/gliw, meaning mirth or entertainment; no prefix or suffix)