happiness
HAP-ee-nis/ˈhæpinɪs/
- 1The good feeling you have when you are glad, joyful, or pleased.
Like the warm feeling you get when something wonderful happens to you.
She felt pure happiness when she saw her family at the airport.
A sense of happiness spread through the crowd as the team scored.
Oppositeunhappiness
- 2A time of doing well in life, with comfort, success, and good health.
Many years of good harvests brought happiness to the small farming town.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
1776, United States Declaration of IndependenceHere, Happiness means doing well in life, with comfort, success, and wellbeing.Oppositesuffering
Note
- 3Good luck, or fortune that helps things turn out well.
It was great happiness that brought the two travelers together on the same road.
All happineſſe bechance to thee in Millaine.
c. 1590, William Shakespeare, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”Here, happinesse means good luck or good fortune.Similarluck, fortune, felicity
Note
Less common meaning
- 4A graceful turn of phrase that seems to come naturally, without effort.
The poem had a happiness of phrasing that no amount of polishing could fake.
Some Beauties yet, no Precepts can declare, / For there's a Happineſs as well as Care.
1711, [Alexander Pope], An Essay on CriticismHere, Happiness means a natural grace or ease that rules cannot teach.Note
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Origin
Made from the word 'happy' plus the ending '-ness'.