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An unaccompanied part song for three or more solo voices. It is not necessarily gleesome.

A club or company organized for singing glees, and (by extension) part songs, ballads, etc.

A live or glowing coal; a glede. [Archaic] Chaucer. Longfellow.

Merry; gay; joyous. Shak.

jest or scoff; a trick or deception. [Obs.] Where's the Bastard's braves, and Charles his gleeks Shak.

A name anciently given to an itinerant minstrel or musician.

To glisten; to gleam. [Obs.] Prior.

Merry; joyous; gleeful.

To flow in a thin, limpid humor; to ooze, as gleet. Wiseman.

Ichorous; thin; limpid. Wiseman.

as, to counterfeit the voice of another person. Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee At all his jokes, for many a joke had he. Goldsmith.

With mirth and frolic; merrily; blithely; gleefully.

dness; joyful; glad. [R.] -- Glad"ful*ness, n. [R.] Spenser. It followed him with gladful glee. Spenser.

A live coal. See Gleed. [Archaic]

ictinus). This name is also sometimes applied to the buzzard. [Written also glead, gled, gleed, glade, and glide.]

ull of counterpoint and imitation, and adhering to the old church modes. Unlike the freer glee, it is best sung with several voices on a part. See Glee.

y 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. Judg. ix. 27.

In the game of gleek, four cards of the same value, as four aces or four kings; hence, four of anything. [Obs.] [Written also mournival.]

s. "A part song differs from a madrigal in its exclusion of contrapuntual devices; from a glee, in its being sung by many voices, instead of by one only, to each part." Stainer & Barrett.

n of a pack of cards not distributed to the players at the beginning of certain games, as gleek, etc., but which might be drawn from afterward as occasion required; a bank. I must buy the stock; send me good cardings. Beau. & Fl.