Happier
adjectiveMore happy; experiencing or showing a greater degree of contentment or pleasure.
How to spell happier
7 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce happier
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does happier mean?
- adjectiveMore happy; experiencing or showing a greater degree of contentment or pleasure.
Happier in a sentence
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She felt much happier after switching to a job closer to home.
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The children are always happier when their grandparents visit.
Where does happier come from?
Language of origin: Old Norse
Happier is the comparative form of happy, which traces back to the Old Norse and Middle English word hap, meaning 'luck', 'chance', or 'fortune'. In the 1300s an event that happened by good hap was a lucky one, and by the late 1300s the adjective happy had formed to describe someone favoured by such fortune, only later softening into the modern sense of feeling pleased or content. The same hap root still survives in everyday words like happen, hapless, mishap, and perhaps, all of which carry that old flavour of chance. To make the comparative, English adds the suffix -er, and because happy ends in a consonant plus y, the y is changed to i before the ending, giving happier rather than happyer. That spelling rule, together with the doubled p inherited from happy, is the main thing to watch when writing the word.
How the word is built
- happy (root, from hap: luck, fortune)
- -ier (comparative suffix, with y changing to i)
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