delight

Pluraldelights (some meanings)

Formsdelights, delighting, delighted

1. 1
   noununcountable

   A feeling of great joy or pleasure.

   He took great delight in surprising his friends.

   The garden was a source of quiet delight throughout the summer.

   Similarjoy, happiness, pleasure, glee, gladness

   Oppositedispleasure, dismay, disappointment, misery

   Note

   The word's history is one of enticement. Latin dēlectāre, 'to please', is a frequentative of dēlicere, 'to allure', which is built on a verb meaning 'I lure'. Middle English spelled it delite, with no gh. The feeling is something you take or find in a thing, and something a thing gives: Shakespeare's isle in The Tempest is full of airs that 'give delight and hurt not'.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A thing or experience that brings great joy or pleasure.

   The concert was a delight from start to finish.

   Her new book is a delight for fans of mystery.

   Similartreat, joy, pleasure

   Oppositedisappointment, bore

   Note

   Here the word points outward, at whatever causes the feeling: a delight, or the delights of a place. It can name a person as readily as a thing, and older love poetry uses it that way. Greensleeves (1580) has 'Greensleeves was my delight', and Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) has 'my ever new delight'. In this use it is close to a term of endearment.

3. 3
   verbintransitive

   To take great pleasure in something.

   Children delight in simple games and silly jokes.

   He delights in proving the skeptics wrong.

   Similarrevel, rejoice, glory

   Note

   Here the person pleased is the subject, and the verb usually takes in before its source: you can delight in a game, in proving someone wrong, or in someone's company. It can also take a to-infinitive. The Cambrian in 1908 describes a man who 'delighted to hear good singing'. Keep it apart from the verb of giving pleasure: a song delights you, but you delight in a song.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To give great pleasure to someone; to please them highly.

   The chef's new menu delighted the critics.

   Small kindnesses delight the people around you.

   Similarplease, gratify, cheer, gladden, exhilarate

   Oppositedisappoint, displease, dismay, sadden

   Note

   A causative verb: whatever pleases is the subject, and the person pleased is the object, as when a landscape delights the eye. The means of pleasing is introduced with with, as in Tennyson's 'Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds' (1842). Its past participle, delighted, often works like an adjective, as in delighted by the news.

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