delight means A place in the United States:; A town in Pike County, Arkansas. It carries an Arena rating of 1773, earned across 30 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, delight ranks #1,374 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words, #1,591 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #3,589 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #5,973 of 17,104 for Most Storied Words.
delight is pronounced /dəˈlaɪt/.
Why “delight” is a great word
A feeling of great and often vivid pleasure or joy. From Middle English delite, from Old French deleiter, from Latin dēlectāre (“to delight, please”), a frequentative of dēlicere (“to allure, entice”), attested from the 13th century; the modern spelling with -gh- is influenced by analogy with words like light and bright. Unlike pleasure, a broader, gentler satisfaction, or delectation, a conscious, almost intellectual savoring, delight is a keen and sudden gladness. It is the cold shock of a ripe strawberry on the tongue, the unbidden laugh at a child’s perfect logic, the discovered trill of a wren in a thicket—a brief, bright fracture in the ordinary, reminding us that joy is not a state to be maintained, but a gift to be surprised by.
Etymology
Attested from the 13th century, from Middle English delite, from Old French deleiter, deliter, from Latin dēlectāre (“to delight, please”), frequentative of dēlicere (“to allure, entice”), from dē- (“away”) + laciō (“to lure, to deceive”), from Proto-Italic *lakjō (“to draw, pull”), of unknown ultimate origin. Doublet of delect. Related with delectation, delicate, delicious and dilettante. The modern unetymological spelling (instead of expected delite) is influenced by light and other words ending in -ight, such as might, bright, etc. The -gh- may also be an attempt to represent the Latin -c-; compare obsolete indight for indict.
name
- A place in the United States:; A town in Pike County, Arkansas.
- A place in the United States:; A township in Custer County, Nebraska.
noun
- Joy; pleasure.e.g.“A fool hath no delight in understanding.” — 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Proverbs 18:2:
- Something that gives great joy or pleasure.e.g.“Greensleeves was all my joy / Greensleeves was my delight, […]” — 1580, Greensleeves:
verb
- To give delight to; to affect with great pleasure; to please highly.e.g.“Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds.” — 1842, Tennyson, Le Morte d’Arthur:
- To have or take great pleasure.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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