delight

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A feeling of great pleasure or joy.

   The children screamed with delight when they saw the puppy.

2. 2
   noun

   Something that gives great pleasure.

   The garden was a delight in spring.

3. 3
   verb

   To give someone great pleasure.

   The magician delighted the audience with his tricks.

4. 4
   verb

   To take great pleasure in something.

   She delights in long walks by the sea.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Delight came into Middle English as delit from French, ultimately deriving from Latin delectare ‘to charm or entice’. The spelling with -gh- arose in the 16th century under the influence of native English words such as light, to which delight is not historically related.

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-;…

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External links

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