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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Gayety

Gayety \Gay"e*ty\, n.; pl. Gayeties. [Written also gaiety.]

  1. The state of being gay; merriment; mirth; acts or entertainments prompted by, or inspiring, merry delight; -- used often in the plural; as, the gayeties of the season.

  2. Finery; show; as, the gayety of dress.

    Syn: Liveliness; mirth; animation; vivacity; glee; blithesomeness; sprightliness; jollity. See Liveliness.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
gayety

see gaiety.

Wiktionary
gayety

n. (alternative spelling of gaiety English)

Usage examples of "gayety".

And if the women on the promenade were homely and ill-dressed, even the bonnes in unpicturesque costumes, and all the men were slouchy and stolid, how could any one tell what an effect of gayety and enjoyment there might be when there were thousands of such people, and the sea was full of bathers, and the flags were flying, and the bands were tooting, and all the theatres were opened, and acrobats and spangled women and painted red-men offered those attractions which, like government, are for the good of the greatest number?

Her language on the subject is so measured and careful as to lead us almost inevitably to the ingerence that the reports which had excited such dissatisfaction at Vienna were not without foundation, but that the French gayety, even if often descending to frivolity, was more to her taste than the German solidity which her mother so highly esteemed, and that she had been at no great pains to hide a preference which must naturally he acceptable to those among whom her future life was to be spent.

That room, looking towards the far expanse of sky and all the countryside, renascent, quivering with sap, was gilded with gayety by the early springtide.

Rose yawned, talked fitfully about the gayeties of the coming week, worked half a leaf on an antimacassar, and sang three or four silly little coquettish songs which somehow jarred on every one.

She smiled and talked and gave herself up to charming gayety, so that there was nothing for Bernard to say but that now at least she was off her guard with a vengeance.

It was full two miles to the Gayety, and as he walked along he remembered how in his palmy days--he had once been the heavyweight champion of New South Wales--he would have ridden in a cab to the fight, and how, most likely, some heavy backer would have paid for the cab and ridden with him.

Neither his own years, which were near forty, nor his character of a clergyman, were any restraint upon him, or engaged him to check, by any useless severity, the gayety in which Henry, who had small propension to debauchery, passed his careless hours.

Valentine, mollified by the compliment, soon recovered her birdlike gayety, and such free and easy conversation ensued between the trio that Mathieu felt both stupefied and embarrassed.

Great ingenuity, however, and vigor of thought, sometimes break out amidst those unnatural conceptions: a few anacreontics surprise us by their ease and gayety: his prose writings please by the honesty and goodness which they express, and even by their spleen and melancholy.

Where Little Arcady had looked for the best Brussels carpets, there came only dull-colored rugs of a most aged and depressing lack of gayety.

The brightness and gayety of the place seemed a greeting to a returning son, and he felt a throb of affection for the freshest, the youngest, the easiest and most good-natured of great capitals.

He went into details, dilating on the gayety and abandon of the affair, waxing lyrical over his own enjoyment of it, stressing, almost unsubtly, the fact that he had not missed his wife, and finally, in one last wild burst of desperation, mentioning casually the presence of a surprising number of Rigellian females in the Arcturian system.

And if the women on the promenade were homely and ill-dressed, even the bonnes in unpicturesque costumes, and all the men were slouchy and stolid, how could any one tell what an effect of gayety and enjoyment there might be when there were thousands of such people, and the sea was full of bathers, and the flags were flying, and the bands were tooting, and all the theatres were opened, and acrobats and spangled women and painted red-men offered those attractions which, like government, are for the good of the greatest number?

It seems so insane that folks get angry at the mere thought of it, yet it enraptures us and gives us gayety and health, and the courage to achieve victory.

The gayety of madame appeared to consist in an occasional visit to paw and maw and grandmaw, up the river a few miles, where she was raised.