Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Archaic Pleasure or a source of pleasure.
  • noun A secluded garden or landscaped area.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Pleasant manners; agreeable behavior; complaisance.
  • noun Pleasure; Satisfaction; enjoyment; delight.
  • noun Pleasure; will.
  • noun A garden, especially a pleasure-garden, or part of a garden attached to a mansion but secluded or screened by trees, shrubs, and close hedges.
  • noun A kind of lawn or gauze in use in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Archaic Pleasure; merriment; gayety; delight; kindness.
  • noun Archaic A secluded part of a garden.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun archaic A pleasure ground laid out with shady walks, trees and shrubs, statuary, and ornamental water; a secluded part of a garden.
  • noun obsolete pleasure

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a pleasant and secluded part of a garden; usually attached to a mansion
  • noun a fundamental feeling that is hard to define but that people desire to experience

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English plaisaunce, pleasantness, source of pleasure, from Old French plaisance, from plaisant, pleasant; see pleasant. Sense 2, originally Scots, after the Pleasance, a street in Edinburgh noted for its pleasure-grounds or walks in the 1500s.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old French plaisance.

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Examples

  • Then he abode with them awhile in pleasance and joyance, after which he began to yearn for his native land; so he went in to Abd al-Rahman and said to him, O uncle, I long for my own country, for I have there estates and effects, which I left in charge of one of my prentices; and I am minded to journey thither that I may sell my properties and return to thee.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Each house of any size had a "pleasance," and the "herberie," or physic garden, which was the pioneer of the pie-plant bed, was connected with the monasteries.

    Comic History of England Bill Nye 1873

  • Brother Cadfael was standing in the middle of his walled herb-garden, looking pensively about him at the autumnal visage of his pleasance, where all things grew gaunt, wiry and sombre.

    A River So Long 2010

  • Before us stretched a two-acre walled garden laid out in the geometric style of a baroque pleasance — with cone-shaped topiary, boxwood hedges, beds in tidy rows, and a shimmering lily pond.

    The Constant Gardener 2007

  • Before us stretched a two-acre walled garden laid out in the geometric style of a baroque pleasance — with cone-shaped topiary, boxwood hedges, beds in tidy rows, and a shimmering lily pond.

    The Constant Gardener 2007

  • Then they ceased not abiding in solace and pleasance and good cheer and abounding prosperity, eating and drinking with mirth and merriment, till there came to them the

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Absent, none taketh heed to him or his concerns; Present, he hath no part in life or pleasance aye.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • They passed the night in all pleasance and happiness, and on the morrow Hasan changed his clothes and donning

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • The abbot, neither overawed by the strength nor by the quantity of the potion, took it off with what he himself would have called a feeling of solace and pleasance, and his voice became much more composed; he signified himself as comforted extraordinarily by the medicine, and willing to proceed to answer any questions which could be put to him by his gallant young friend.

    Castle Dangerous 2008

  • And the two brothers abode with their wives in all pleasance and solace of life and its delights, for that indeed Allah the Most High had changed their annoy into joy; and on this wise they continued till there took them the Destroyer of delights and the Severer of societies, the Desolator of dwelling-places and Garnerer of grave-yards, and they were translated to the ruth of Almighty

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

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