Joy
nounA feeling of great happiness or delight.
How to spell joy
3 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce joy
What does joy mean?
- nounA feeling of great happiness or delight.
Joy in a sentence
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The birth of their daughter filled the couple with joy.
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She could hardly contain her joy when the results arrived.
Where does joy come from?
Language of origin: French
The word joy entered English in the early 1200s from the Old French joie, meaning gladness or delight. That French word descended from the Latin gaudia, the plural of gaudium, which literally meant a feeling of inner gladness, built on the verb gaudere, to rejoice or be glad. Over time the plural form was treated as a single feminine noun in French, which is why English inherited the simple shape joy rather than something closer to the Latin gaudium. The same Latin root still surfaces in more formal English borrowings such as gaudy, which once described showy ornaments associated with festive celebration. For spellers the word is reassuringly regular: the single oy spelling neatly matches the sound and rarely causes trouble.
How the word is built
- joy (from Old French joie: delight; no affixes)
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