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glee

 - 5 dictionary results

glee

1  [glee]
Use glee in a Sentence
–noun
1. open delight or pleasure; exultant joy; exultation.
2. an unaccompanied part song for three or more voices, popular esp. in the 18th century.
Origin:
bef. 900; ME; OE glēo; c. ON glȳ; akin to glow

Synonyms:
1. merriment, jollity, hilarity, mirth, joviality, gaiety. See mirth.

glee

2  [glee] Scot. and North England
–verb (used without object)
1. to squint or look with one eye.
–noun
2. a squint.
3. an imperfect eye, esp. one with a cast.
Origin:
1250–1300; ME glien, gleen; perh. < Scand; cf. ON gljā to shine
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To glee
glee   (glē)   
n.  

  1. Jubilant delight; joy.

  2. Music A part song scored for three or more usually male and unaccompanied voices that was popular in the 18th century.


[Middle English gle, entertainment, from Old English glēo; see ghel-2 in Indo-European roots.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Word Origin & History

glee 
O.E. gliu "entertainment, mirth, jest," presumably from a P.Gmc. *gliujan but absent in other Gmc. languages except for the rare O.N. gly. In O.E., an entertainer was a gleuman. A poetic word in M.E., obsolete c.1500-c.1700, it somehow found its way back to currency late 18c. Glee club (1814) is from the secondary O.E. sense of "unaccompanied part-song," as a form of musical entertainment.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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Encyclopedia

glee

(from Old English gleo: "music" or "entertainment," used in this sense in Beowulf), vocal composition for three or more unaccompanied solo male voices, including a countertenor. It consists of several short sections of contrasting character or mood, each ending in a full close, or cadence, and its text is often concerned with eating and drinking. In style it is homophonic-i.e., based on chords rather than on interwoven melodies. Although the first composer to use the term for a musical work was John Playford (1652), the glee flourished from about 1740 to about 1830. By the late 18th century, glees were also composed for mixed voices (male and female). The term is also loosely applied to various vocal compositions of the 17th-19th centuries that do not conform to these characteristics-e.g., the instrumentally accompanied part-songs by Henry Bishop

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
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