cheerful

comparative more cheerful · comparative cheerfuler · comparative cheerfuller · superlative most cheerful · superlative cheerfulest · superlative cheerfullest · alternative archaic cheerfull · alternative archaic dialectal chearful

1. Noticeably happy and optimistic.

   Ever in cheerfullest mood art thou, when others are filled with Gloomy forebodings of illl, and see only ruin before them.

   1847 November 1, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, chapter II, in Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie, Boston, Mass.: William D. Ticknor & Company, →OCLC, part I, page 32

   2 more examples

   He moped, she felt, as the time went by, and he was cheerfuler only when some letter, full of hope without expectation, came from Dick.

   1913, W[illiam] D[ean] Howells, chapter XXIII, in New Leaf Mills: A Chronicle, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC, page 150

   The Eskimo is a nobler, cheerfuller and easy-goinger person than we smug civilized citizens have always imagined. Rockwell Kent, the noted Eskimophile, claims they are a polite and happy race.

   1935 July 2, W. E. Farbstein, “Marginal Notes”, in Washington Herald, volume XIII, number 219, Washington, D.C.: American Newspapers, Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 15, column 7

   Synonyms: cheery, bright, bubbly, cheerly, ebullient, happy, joyful, merry · Antonyms: depressed, gloomy, miserable, sad

2. Bright and pleasant.

   They enjoyed a cheerful room.

   1 more example

   At half-past nine on this Saturday evening, the parlour of the Salutation Inn, High Holborn, contained most of its customary visitors.[…]In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass.

   1892, Walter Besant, chapter III, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC