Definitions

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

  • noun Great merriment.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Demonstrative mirth or merriment; gleeful exhilaration; social gaiety; jollity.
  • noun Synonyms Hilarity, Joy, Glee, Joviality; gaiety, exhilaration. Joy is not often used of the excitement or overflow of animal spirits, but is rather and almost distinctively an affection of the mind. Glee is a strong word for an acute or ecstatic pleasure that expresses itself in mirthfulness and other demonstrative signs of high spirits. Joviality is that feeling or character which, being itself gay, merry, or jolly, brings others into the same mood; the word is generally used in a good sense. Hilarity is more often, but not necessarily, used of mirth, laughter, or other signs of exhilaration exceeding the limits of reason or propriety. See animation, mirth, gladness, happiness.

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

  • noun Boisterous mirth; merriment; jollity.

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

  • noun uncountable A great amount of amusement, usually accompanied by laughter.
  • noun countable Something that induces laughter.

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

  • noun great merriment

Etymologies

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

[Middle English hilarite, good spirits, from Old French, from Latin hilaritās, from hilaris, cheerful, from Greek hilaros.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin hilaritas, "cheerfulness", from adjective hilaris, "cheerful", ultimately from Greek, + noun of state suffix -tas.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Man to female date: So, basically, you sleep with people out of hilarity?

    May 21, 2009

  • Howling hilarity upon rereading the book in this context.

    January 24, 2018