{"id":6212,"date":"2023-01-21T03:34:14","date_gmt":"2023-01-21T03:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=6212"},"modified":"2023-01-21T03:37:13","modified_gmt":"2023-01-21T03:37:13","slug":"word-of-the-day-glee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2023\/01\/21\/word-of-the-day-glee\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Glee"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day, courtesy of the Old English Wordhord app, is glee<\/em>. According to dictionary.com, glee has two definitions: 1. \u201copen delight or pleasure; exultant joy; exultation\u201d; and 2. \u201can unaccompanied part song for three or more voices, popular especially in the 18th century.\u201d But it is a good bit more complicated than that when you look at the history of the word. In fact, the word that actually appeared on the Wordhord app was gl<\/em>\u012bw-word<\/em>, which means \u201cword of a song, song, or poem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to etymonline.com, glee<\/em> comes from \u201cOld English gliu<\/em>, gliw<\/em>, gleow <\/em>\u2018entertainment, mirth (usually implying music); jest, play, sport,\u2019 also \u2018music\u2019 and \u2018mockery,\u2019 presumably from a Proto-Germanic *gleujam<\/em> but absent in other Germanic languages except for the rare Old Norse gly \u2018<\/em>joy;\u2019 probably related to the group of Germanic words in gl- <\/em>with senses of \u2018shining; smooth; radiant; joyful\u2019 (compare glad<\/strong><\/a>), from PIE root *ghel-<\/strong><\/a> (2) \u2018to shine.\u2019\u201d The website says that in Old English it was a \u201cpoetry word\u201d but that it become obsolete sometime between1500 and 1700: \u201cit somehow found its way back to currency late 18c. In Old English, an entertainer was a gleeman <\/em>(female gleo-m\u00e6gden<\/em>).\u201d Just a reminder, the * before a word from Proto-IndoEuropean (PIE) or from Proto-Germanic means that we do not have direct evidence, like a document, with that word; the word has been reconstructed based upon linguistic principles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to what it says about the Old English background of glee, etymonline says, \u201cGlee club<\/em> (1814) is from the secondary sense of \u2018musical composition for three or more solo voices, unaccompanied, in contrasting movement\u2019 (1650s), a form of musical entertainment that flourished 1760-1830.\u201d When I was in high school, \u201cGlee Club\u201d is what the school called the chorus. At the time, I just assumed that it meant people who bring gladness to others through song. I had no idea that a glee was a song and that the word actually dated from the Old English period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another word connected to the PIE *ghel-<\/strong><\/a> is the English word glad<\/em>, which comes from Old English gl\u00e6d<\/em>. But the Old English has a stronger sense than the modern word; it means \u201c\u2019bright, shining, gleaming; joyous; pleasant, gracious,\u2019\u201d according to etymonline.com, which says further, \u201cApparently the notion is of being radiant with joy; the modern sense \u2018feeling pleasure or satisfaction\u2019 is much weakened.\u201d Semantic weakening is a linguistic phenomenon (also called semantic bleaching, semantic loss, and semantic reduction, among other things. Philip Durkin says that the phenomenon occurs \u201cwhere the semantic content of a word becomes reduced as the grammatical content increases, for instance in the development of intensifiers<\/a> such as awfully, terribly, horribly <\/em>(e.g. awfully late, awfully big, awfully small<\/em>) or pretty <\/em>(pretty good, pretty bad <\/em>. . .)” (The Oxford Guide to Etymology<\/em>. Oxford University Press, 2009). So the bright joyousness of Old English gl\u00e6d <\/em>has become, \u201cGlad to meet you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image is of a glee club setting some kind of record: https:\/\/reductress.com\/post\/high-school-glee-club-holds-world-record-for-longest-harmonized-yasssssss\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day, courtesy of the Old English Wordhord app, is glee. According to dictionary.com, glee has two definitions: 1. \u201copen delight or pleasure; exultant joy; exultation\u201d; and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[443,129,239],"class_list":["post-6212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-glee","tag-language","tag-words","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6215,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6212\/revisions\/6215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}