Happy
adjectiveFeeling or showing pleasure, contentment, or satisfaction.
How to spell happy
5 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce happy
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does happy mean?
- adjectiveFeeling or showing pleasure, contentment, or satisfaction.
Happy in a sentence
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The whole team felt happy when the project finally launched.
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She was happy to spend the weekend with her family.
Where does happy come from?
Language of origin: Old Norse
The word happy goes back to the Middle English noun hap, meaning 'luck' or 'chance', which English borrowed from the Old Norse word happ, carrying the same sense of good fortune. By the late 1300s, adding the adjective ending -y produced 'happy', whose earliest meaning was 'lucky' or 'favoured by fortune' rather than merely 'cheerful'. Over the following centuries the sense softened from outward good luck to the inward feeling of contentment we recognise today. The same hap root still survives in the everyday words 'happen', 'haphazard', and 'perhaps', all of which keep a flavour of chance about them. The spelling is regular, with the doubled p marking the short vowel before the -y ending.
How the word is built
- hap (luck, chance, from Old Norse happ)
- -y (adjective suffix)
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