- merry
- merry, blithe, jocund, jovial, jolly mean indicating or showing high spirits or lightheartedness often in play and laughter.Merry implies a gay, cheerful temper or mood and uninhibited enjoyment of frolic, festivity, or fun of any sort{
a merrier man, within the limit of becoming mirth, I never spent an hour's talk withal— Shak.
}{let us drink and be merry, dance, joke, and rejoice— Jordan
}{for the good are always the merry, save by an evil chance, and the merry love the fiddle, and the merry love to dance— Yeats
}Blithe carries a stronger implication of freshness, buoyancy, and lightheartedness than merry; it usually suggests carefree, innocent, or even heedless gaiety{see this lovely child, blithe, innocent, and free. She spends a happy time with little care— Shelley
}{he wrote blithe gay idiocies to me— White
}{entertained by the author's blithe companionship and his engaging chatter— Percy Atkinson
}Jocund heightens the implication of gladness and usually also connotes liveliness, exhilaration of spirits, or elation{a poet could not but be gay, in such a jocund company— Wordsworth
}{he was ... in that jocund, new-married mood— Mary Austin
}{invested the matter with a clownish significance that perfectly fitted the spirit of the circus— jocund, yet charming— E. B. White
}Jovial connotes especially good-fellowship or conviviality{a jovial, full-stomached, portly government servant with a marvelous capacity for making bad puns— Kipling
}{his manner became more jaunty, jovial, half-jesting— Wolfe
}Jolly often suggests higher spirits than jovial and an even more manifest attempt to keep others laughing (as by jesting, bantering, and playing tricks){I don't care; I'm not refined. I like the jolly old pantomime where a man sits on his top hat— Chesterton
}{ran down the street . . . with so jolly an air that he set everyone he passed into a good humor— Stevenson
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
