Other forms: glees
Glee is great delight, and quite often delight at somebody else's misfortune. Rubbing your hands together.
That edge is what makes the word interesting, since pure happiness is joy and glee usually has something a bit gloating in it. It takes with, as in with obvious glee. English borrowed the German word schadenfreude for the same idea more precisely. There is an older and quite innocent musical sense, since a glee is a part-song and a glee club is a choir that sings them.
1noungleeGreat delight, often at another's misfortune.
“He announced the news with undisguised glee.”
Glee once covered music. Old English glīw meant mirth, play, sport and minstrelsy all at once, from a root meaning to joke, which is why a glee club sings rather than laughs.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʰlew- — to joke, make fun, enjoy
Proto-Germanic
*glīwą — joy, mirth
Proto-West Germanic
*glīw
Old English
glēo
Middle English
gle
English, today
glee
Built from
From Middle English gle, from Old English glēo, glīġ, glēow, glīw (“glee, pleasure, mirth, play, sport; music; mockery”), from Proto-West Germanic glīw, from Proto-Germanic glīwą (“joy, mirth”), from Proto-Indo-European gʰlew- (“to joke, make fun, enjoy”). Cognate with Scots gle, glie, glew (“game, play, sport, mirth, joy, rejoicing, entertainment, melody, music”), Icelandic glý (“joy, glee, gladness”), Ancient Greek χλεύη (“joke, jest, scorn”). A poetic word in Middle English, the word was obsolete by 1500, but revived late 18c.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA