joyful

/ˈdʒɔɪfəl/

/ˈdʒɔɪfəl/

Someone who's joyful is very happy. A joyful child will laugh with delight.

When you experience the feeling of joy, you're joyful. For many people, their wedding day, the birth of their children, or simply a beautiful summer afternoon can all be joyful occasions. To be joyful is beyond being happy — there is delight and a kind of bliss involved in feeling joyful. The noun joy is at the root of joyful, from the Old French joie with its Latin root of gaudere, "rejoice."

Definitions of joyful

1. adjective

   full of or producing joy
   “make a joyful noise”

   “a joyful occasion”

   synonyms:

   happy

   enjoying or showing or marked by joy or pleasure

   beatific

   experiencing or bestowing celestial joy

   overjoyed

   extremely joyful

   joyous

   full of or characterized by joy

   antonyms:

   sorrowful

   experiencing or marked by or expressing sorrow especially that associated with irreparable loss

   unhappy

   experiencing or marked by or causing sadness or sorrow or discontent

   anguished, tormented, tortured

   experiencing intense pain especially mental pain

   bereaved, bereft, grief-stricken, grieving, mourning, sorrowing

   sorrowful through loss or deprivation

   bitter

   expressive of severe grief or regret

   brokenhearted, heartbroken, heartsick

   full of sorrow

   dolorous, dolourous, lachrymose, tearful, weeping

   showing sorrow

   elegiac

   expressing sorrow often for something past

   grievous, heart-wrenching, heartbreaking, heartrending

   causing or marked by grief or anguish

   lamenting, wailful, wailing

   vocally expressing grief or sorrow or resembling such expression

   lugubrious

   excessively mournful

   mournful, plaintive

   expressing sorrow

   sad

   of things that make you feel sad

   woebegone, woeful

   affected by or full of grief

   joyless

   not experiencing or inspiring joy
2. adjective

   full of high-spirited delight
   “a joyful heart”

   synonyms: elated, gleeful, jubilant

   joyous

   full of or characterized by joy