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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.

To show mirth, satisfaction, or derision, by peculiar movement of the muscles of the face, particularly of the mouth, causing a lighting up of the face and eyes, and usually accompanied by the emission of explosive or chuckling sounds from the chest and throat; to indulge in laughter. Queen Hecuba laughed that her eyes…

Plautus too light. Shak. Specimens of New England humor laboriously light and lamentably mirthful. Hawthorne.

to deface. I pray you mar no more trees with wiring love songs in their barks. Shak. But mirth is marred, and the good cheer is lost. Dryden. Ire, envy, and despair Which marred all his borrowed visage. Milton.

In a merry manner; with mirth; with gayety and laughter; jovially. See Mirth, and Merry. Merrily sing, and sport, and play. Granville.

Gayety, with laughter; mirth; frolic. "Follies and light merriment." Spenser. Methought it was the sound Of riot and ill-managed merriment. Milton.

The quality or state of being merry; merriment; mirth; gayety, with laughter.

Causing laughter, mirth, gladness, or delight; as, merry jest. "Merry wind and weather." Spenser. Merry dancers. See under Dancer. -- Merry men, followers; retainers. [Obs.] His merie men commanded he To make him bothe game and glee. Chaucer. -- To make merry, to be jovial; to indulge in hilarity; to feast with mirth.…

Mirth; frolic; a meeting for mirth; a festival. [Written also merrimake.]

Making or producing mirth; convivial; jolly.

A meeting for mirth.

ence, liberty of acting; room for enlargement or display; scope; as, to give full play to mirth. Play actor, an actor of dramas. Prynne. -- Play debt, a gambling debt. Arbuthnot. -- Play pleasure, idle amusement. [Obs.] Bacon. -- A play upon words, the use of a word in such a way as to be capable of double meaning;…

sh; a proper dress. The proper study of mankind is man. Pope. In Athens all was pleasure, mirth, and play, All proper to the spring, and sprightly May. Dryden.

Incitement; stimulus; as, provocation to mirth.

Hence, harsh and disagreeable to the ear; dissonant. [R.] "A ragged noise of mirth." Herbert.

betakes himself habitually; a place of frequent assembly; a haunt. Far from all resort of mirth. Milton.

t with loose and noisy jollity; riotous festivity or merrymaking; a carousal. This day in mirth and revel to dispend. Chaucer. Some men ruin . . . their bodies by incessant revels. Rambler. Master of the revels, Revel master. Same as Lord of misrule, under Lord.

To get over; to dispose of; to dispatch; to finish. [R.] "Willingness rids way." Shak. Mirth will make us rid ground faster than if thieves were at our tails. J. Webster. To be rid of, to be free or delivered from. -- To get rid of, to get deliverance from; to free one's self from.

, inflammations of the lungs were rife and mortal. Arbuthnot. Even now the tumult of loud mirth Was rife, and perfect in may listening ear. Milton.

A boisterous outcry or shouting, as in mirth. Pit, boxes, and galleries were in a constant roar of laughter. Macaulay.