beamish
Other forms: beamishly
Use the adjective beamish when you describe someone who is smiling and cheerful. A beamish child tends to laugh and play happily with his friends all afternoon.
Though it's unusual, beamish is a descriptive way to talk about a smiley, optimistic person. Your kindergarten teacher may have been beamish, cheering students up with her positive attitude and sweet smile. Most kids are beamish when they visit amusement parks and playgrounds. Beamish dates from the 1500s, from the verb beam, "to smile radiantly." Lewis Carroll may have thought he invented the word in his poem "Jabberwocky," which is full of made-up words, but beamish is real, if uncommon.
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smiling with happiness or optimism
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Vocabulary lists containing beamish
This poem is one of the most celebrated bits of nonsense in the English language. Carroll was a master at devising things that sound like words but aren't, and in creating joy from the sheer sound of these "words" (etext found here).
Aside from being poems with one-word titles, Gary Soto's "Oranges," Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" and Paul Fleischman's "Fireflies" all use a lot of alliteration, so the lyrical lines roll off the tongue when read aloud. Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 6 Unit 4's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: Shakespeare dumbed down, Shakespeare's Life, Reading Shakespeare's Language, The Southpaw, A Book of Nonsense, The Millionaire Miser, Oranges; Jabberwocky; Fireflies, The Taming of the Shrew