Happiness is the state of feeling good about your life. Find happiness, the pursuit of happiness, lasting happiness.
Research separates two things the one word covers: how you feel day to day and how you judge your life overall, and they can move in opposite directions. Income raises both, with diminishing returns. Note that hap means chance, so happiness once meant good fortune — as happen and haphazard still show.
1nounhappinessThe state of feeling good about your life.
“Money can't buy happiness, but it can make life a lot easier.”
happiness is a state of wellbeing.
Middle English
happy
English
happy
English, today
happiness
Built from
From happy + -ness. happy comes from Middle English happy. From Middle English happy (“fortunate, happy”), perhaps an alteration of Middle English happyn, happen (“fortunate, happy”), possibly related to or from Old Norse heppinn (“fortunate, happy”); and potentially assimilated to be equivalent to hap + -y. Compare also Icelandic heppinn (“lucky”), Faroese heppin (“fortunate, lucky, happy”), Norwegian Nynorsk heppen (“lucky”), Scots happin (“fortunate, blessed”). See further at hap.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA