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The state or quality of being jocund; gayety; sportiveness.

llness ever loves a joke. Pope. Or witty joke our airy senses moves To pleasant laughter. Gay.

Noisy mirth; gayety; merriment; festivity; boisterous enjoyment. Chaucer. All now was turned to jollity and game. Milton. He with a proud jollity commanded him to leave that quarrel only for him, who was only worthy to enter into it. Sir P. Sidney.

Expressing mirth, or inspiring it; exciting mirth and gayety. And with his jolly pipe delights the groves. Prior. Their jolly notes they chanted loud and clear. Fairfax.

Gay; merry; joyous; jolly; mirth-inspiring; hilarious; characterized by mirth or jollity; as, a jovial youth; a jovial company; a jovial poem. Be bright and jovial among your guests. Shak. His odes are some of them panegyrical, others moral; the rest are jovial or bacchanalian. Dryden.

In a jovial manner; merrily; gayly. B. Jonson.

The sign or exhibition of joy; gayety; mirth; merriment; festivity. Such joy made Una, when her knight she found. Spenser. The roofs with joy resound. Dryden.

Enjoyment; gayety; festivity; joyfulness. Spenser. Some days of joyance are decreed to all. Byron. From what hid fountains doth thy joyance flow Trench.

Glad; gay; merry; joyful; also, affording or inspiring joy; with of before the word or words expressing the cause of joy. Is this your joyous city Is. xxiii. 7. They all as glad as birds of joyous prime. Spenser. And joyous of our conquest early won. Dryden.

A prison; a jail; a lockup. [Slang] Gay.

See Kie, Ky, and Kine. [Prov. Eng.] Gay.

One who, or that which, kindles, stirs up, or sets on fire."Kindlers of riot." Gay.

Amorous; also, lively; light-footed; nimble; gay; sprightly. [Prov. Eng.] Halliwell.

Mischievously; waggishly; roguishly. "Knavishly witty." Gayton.

Fig.: To be or appear gay, cheerful, pleasant, mirthful, lively, or brilliant; to sparkle; to sport. Then laughs the childish year, with flowerets crowned. Dryden. In Folly's cup still laughs the bubble Joy. Pope. To laugh at, to make an object of laughter or ridicule; to make fun of; to deride. No wit to flatter left…

of its value for a given rise or fall of temperature; -- sometimes less correctly styled Gay Lussac's law, or Dalton's law. -- Law of nations. See International law, under International. -- Law of nature. (a) A broad generalization expressive of the constant action, or effect, of natural conditions; as, death is a l…

Lack of gravity and earnestness in deportment or character; trifling gayety; frivolity; sportiveness; vanity. " A spirit of levity and libertinism." Atterbury. He never employed his omnipotence out of levity. Calamy.

Indulging in, or inclined to, levity; wanting dignity or solemnity; trifling; gay; frivolous; airy; unsubstantial. Seneca can not be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. Shak. Specimens of New England humor laboriously light and lamentably mirthful. Hawthorne.

Free from grief or anxiety; gay; cheerful; merry. -- Light"-heart`ed*ly, adv. -- Light"-heart"ed*ness, n.

Without heed or care; with levity; gayly; airily. Matrimony . . . is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly. Book of Common Prayer [Eng. Ed.].