delightful

English

Etymology

From Middle English deliteful, delitfull, equivalent to delight +‎ -ful.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /dəˈlaɪt.fəl/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: de‧light‧ful

Adjective

delightful (comparative more delightful or delightfuler or delightfuller, superlative most delightful or delightfulest or delightfullest)

1. Pleasant; pleasing, bringing enjoyment, satisfaction, or pleasure.
   • 1853, Lewis Carroll [pseudonym; Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], “The Two Brothers”, in Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, editor, The Lewis Carroll Picture Book […], London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, published 1899, →OCLC, page 22:

     What? a higher delight to be drawn from the sight / Of fish full of life and of glee? / What a noodle you are! ’tis delightfuller far / To kill them than let them go free!

   • 1888, Venier Voldo, “Memoria in Eterna”, in Poems from the Pacific: The West’s Reply to England’s Laureate, 2nd edition, San Francisco, Calif.: The Bancroft Company, →OCLC, page 134:

     O, Joy! quicker than fire! O, Hope of things! / O, gracious gladness mighty with delight! / O, subtle sweet, delightfuler than might! / Ah, me, no fiercer laughing unction springs / From the fair Hope of things!

   • 1908 July 6, S[amuel] L[anghorne] Clemens, “A Letter from Mark Twain: Innocence at Home”, in Collier’s, volume XLI, number 20, New York, N.Y.: P[eter] F[enelon] Collier & Son, published 8 August 1908, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 22, column 2:

     Hon. Collier Weekly which furnish Japanese Schoolboy to public not often enough, when is his book coming out? […] That Boy is the dearest & sweetest & frankest & wisest & funniest & delightfulest & lovablest creation that has been added to our literature for a long time.

     Transcription: Benjamin Griffin, Harriet Elinor Smith, editors (2015), “Explanatory Notes”, in Autobiography of Mark Twain (The Mark Twain Papers), volume 3, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 599.

   • 1977, Agatha Christie, chapter 4, in An Autobiography, part I, London: Collins, →ISBN:

     An indulgent playmate, Grannie would lay aside the long scratchy-looking letter she was writing (heavily crossed 'to save notepaper') and enter into the delightful pastime of 'a chicken from Mr Whiteley's'.

   • 2013 December 11, Megan Garber, quoting Marissa Mayer, “Is ‘Delightful’ the New ‘Cool’?”, in The Atlantic‎^[1]:

     That is what I plan to do at Yahoo: give the end user something valuable and delightful that makes them want to come to Yahoo every day.

Alternative forms

• delightfull (archaic)

Derived terms

• delightfully
• delightfulness
• undelightful

Translations

pleasant; pleasing

• Arabic: بَهِيج (bahīj)
• Azerbaijani: fərəhli
• Bikol Central: masanggaya
• Bulgarian: възхитителен (bg) (vǎzhititelen)
• Catalan: encantador
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 嫵媚 / 妩媚 (zh) (wǔmèi), 愉快 (zh) (yúkuài)

• Esperanto: rava
• Estonian: rõõmustav
• Finnish: ihastuttava (fi), ihana (fi)
• French: délicieux (fr)

  Old French: delitable

• Galician: deleitoso (gl), deleitábel (gl)
• German: reizvoll (de), entzückend (de), angenehm (de)
• Greek:

  Ancient: τερπνός (terpnós), θυμήρης (thumḗrēs)

• Hindi: सुखद (hi) (sukhad), सुखदायी (hi) (sukhdāyī), सुखदायक (hi) (sukhdāyak)
• Irish: caithiseach, taitneamhach
• Japanese: 楽しい (ja) (たのしい, tanoshii), 愉快な (ja) (ゆかいな, yukai na)
• Korean: 매우 기쁜 (mae'u gippeun)
• Latin: iūcundus, voluptuosus
• Persian: دلپذیر (fa) (delpazir), دلپسند (fa) (delpasand)
• Romanian: delicios (ro)
• Russian: восхити́тельный (ru) (vosxitítelʹnyj), очарова́тельный (ru) (očarovátelʹnyj), прия́тный (ru) (prijátnyj)
• Sanskrit: रम्य (sa) (ramya)
• Spanish: delicioso (es), deleitoso (es), deleitable