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smile

UK/ˈsmaɪl/US/ˈsmaɪl/
verbA22 meaningsVery common — you will meet it every day · #682 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: smiling, smiles, smiled

To smile is to turn the corners of your mouth up because you feel good. Smile at her, a broad smile, give us a smile.

A genuine smile involves the muscles round the eyes as well as the mouth, and one without them is recognised as false by almost everybody without being able to say why — it is called a Duchenne smile after the physiologist who noticed. Smiling is contagious. Note smile at somebody, which is warm, and smile about something; and that in some cultures smiling at strangers is friendly and in others it is odd.

Leonardo da Vinci · Public domain

Definitions of smile

  1. 1verbsmileTo turn the corners of your mouth up because you feel good.A2

    “The baby smiled when she saw her mother.”

  2. 2nounexpressionThe expression itself.A2

    “She has a lovely smile that makes everyone feel welcome.”

Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.

smile is an expression of pleasure.

Where it comes from

Middle English smilen came from Germanic and is related to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning to laugh or wonder — the same root behind marvel and mirror at a great distance.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *(s)mey-

  2. Proto-Indo-European

    *smey- — to laugh, be glad, wonder

  3. Proto-Germanic

    *smilāną — to smile

  4. Proto-West Germanic

    *smilēn

  5. Old High German

    smielēn

  6. Middle High German

    smielen

  7. Middle Low German

    *smîlen — to smile

  8. Middle English

    smilen — to smile

  9. English, today

    smile

From Middle English smilen (“to smile”), from Middle Low German smîlen (“to smile”), from Middle High German smielen, from Old High German smielēn, from Proto-West Germanic smilēn, from Proto-Germanic smilāną (“to smile”), from Proto-Indo-European smey- (“to laugh, be glad, wonder”). Cognate with Danish smile, Swedish smila, Faroese smíla (“to smile”); also stq smielje (“to smile”), Low German smielen (“to smile”), Dutch smuilen (“to smile”), Middle High German smielen (“to smile”). Related also to Old High German smierōn (“to smile”), Old English smerian (“to laugh at”), Old English smercian, smearcian "to smile"; > English smirk, Latin mīror (“to wonder at”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Everyday Verbs

Practise this word

smile in the wild

  • A smile is a facial expression formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the mouth.

    Smile

  • The act is usually performed with a utility knife or a piece of broken glass, leaving a scar which causes the victim to appear to be smiling broadly.

    Glasgow smile

  • Smile surgery or smile reconstruction is a surgical procedure that restores the smile for people with facial nerve paralysis.

    Smile surgery

  • When these branches are paralysed, there is an inability to create a symmetric smile.

    Smile surgery

  • A smiley, also known as a smiley face, is a basic ideogram representing a smiling face.

    Smiley

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

the smielēn family

smile

smile — used about once every 58 pages · #682 · point at the bar for the others