Jolly

How to spell jolly

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce jolly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does jolly mean?

1. adjectiveHappy, good-humoured, and full of cheerful high spirits.
2. adverbUsed informally in British English to mean very or extremely.
3. verbTo keep someone in good humour, usually in order to coax or encourage them.

Jolly in a sentence

• adjective

  The host was warm and jolly throughout the dinner party.

• adverb

  The new manager made things jolly difficult for everyone.

• verb

  The foreman tried to jolly the tired crew through the last hour.

• adjective

  A jolly crowd gathered around the bonfire to sing.

• adverb

  It was jolly expensive to fix the leaking roof.

• verb

  She would gently jolly her father into taking his medicine.

Where does jolly come from?

Language of origin: French

Jolly came into English in the 1300s from the Old French adjective jolif, which meant festive, merry, and also pretty or attractive. Many scholars trace jolif further back to the Old Norse word jol, the name of the great midwinter feast that survives in English as Yule, so the original flavour of the word was the cheerfulness of a holiday celebration. Over the centuries the French ending softened and the word settled into the spelling jolly, while the meaning narrowed to the sense of good-humoured high spirits we use today. In British English it also slipped into use as a casual intensifier, as in jolly good, a colouring of the word that never fully crossed to North America. The spelling trap is small but real: the word doubles its l and finishes with a single y, even though it feels like it should be spelled the way it sounds.

How the word is built

• joll- (from Old French jolif: festive, merry, pretty)
• -y (adjective suffix)