enjoyment

plural enjoyments

1. uncountableThe condition of enjoying anything.

   Few activities better the enjoyment of a hearty meal eaten in good company.

   2 more examples

   Then we relapsed into a discomfited silence, and wished we were anywhere else. But Miss Thorn relieved the situation by laughing aloud, and with such a hearty enjoyment that instead of getting angry and more mortified we began to laugh ourselves, and instantly felt better.

   1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter V, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC

   Our Republic continues to increase in the enjoyment of freedom within its borders, and to offer strength and encouragement to all those who love freedom throughout the world.

   1950 January 4, Harry S. Truman, Fifth State of the Union Address

2. uncountableAn enjoyable state of mind; a feeling of satisfaction or delight from a situation.

   I experienced more enjoyment from summer camp than any part of school.

   1 more example

   All acts suppose certain dispositions, and habits of mind and heart, which may be in themselves states of enjoyment or of wretchedness, and which must be fruitful in other consequences besides those particular acts.

   1833, John Stuart Mill, Remarks on Bentham's Philosophy

3. countableAn activity that gives pleasure.

   Is it, haply, an idle occupation, or is the time ill-spent that is spent in roaming the world in quest, not of its enjoyments, but of those arduous toils whereby the good mount upwards to the abodes of everlasting life?

   1885, John Ormsby, Don Quixote, translation of original by Miguel de Cervantes, published 1605, 1615

4. countableuncountablelawThe exercise of a legal right.