Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In a gleeful manner; merrily; gaily.

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

  • adverb joyfully

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

  • adverb in a joyous and gleeful manner

Etymologies

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Examples

  • By 2004 they owned the party and applied the term gleefully to the Last Surviving Republican Moderates, Susan Collins and Olympia Snow.

    OpEdNews - OpEdNews.Com Progressive, Tough Liberal News and Opinion 2010

  • So, for example, in the sentence “I am gleefully wacky,” gleefully is an adverb because it modifies an adjective (wacky).

    Superhero Nation: how to write superhero novels and comic books » Weekend Writing Exercise 2009

  • Sterling ended the session by reading gleefully from a news report about a riot in Chiapas that started with a raid by the police on some vendors of pirated software, hinting perhaps at real consumer price wars in our future.

    Boing Boing: March 10, 2002 - March 16, 2002 Archives 2002

  • She caught herself using the word gleefully and felt ashamed.

    Mary Queen Of Scotland And The Isles George, Margaret 1987

  • She caught herself using the word gleefully and felt ashamed.

    Mary Queen Of Scotland And The Isles George, Margaret 1987

  • But he was; she heard his shrill voice calling her name gleefully and turned round once more to see the boat gliding away at a great rate with him waving from a seat in the middle.

    Grasp A Nettle Neels, Betty 1977

  • For the record, let's consider the Fannie and Freddie debacle: Barney Frank in 2003 said that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not facing any kind of financial crisis ... then we have Bill Clinton who asserted that Democrats resisted standards for two institutions ... on the top of that we now have Obama who is a top recipient of Freddie and Fannie lobbies pushing for no-doc loans, nothing-down houses, equity-line hustles, phony appraisals, in short gleefully shaking the money tree in every direction they could.

    The Last Debt Orgy 2008

  • "A fortnight, then," Gord called gleefully over his shoulder.

    Night Arrant Gygax, Gary 1987

  • She greeted the word like a new toy and, for the next three weeks, everyone and everything in her life had the r-word gleefully applied to them, from her brother to contestants on Strictly Come Dancing.

    Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph Max Davidson 2011

  • Now under the influence of a homemade hallucinogenic substance, Oscar is making another impression altogether whether he's singing and smiling gleefully, which is spooking the guests at such a somber affair, or threatening to jump from the rooftop (while naked, of course) because he mistakenly thinks that Elaine is cheating on him.

    Crosswalk.com - Home Christa Banister 2010

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