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Hilarity   /hɪlˈɛrəti/   Listen
Hilarity

noun
1.
Great merriment.  Synonyms: glee, gleefulness, mirth, mirthfulness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Hilarity" Quotes from Famous Books



... Hear ye!" shouted the doctor's son, in the midst of the hilarity that ensued. "Hugo Mallin solves the whole problem of eugenics by destroying ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... and the creaking of reels, the loud banter, the peals of laughter, the sweet Irish songs that filled up the pauses of the louder mirth, and the strains of the fiddle that ever and anon added to the enlivening spirit of the scene, all constituted such a full and general chorus of hilarity as could seldom ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... were prevalent, in rural neighborhoods, other recreations promotive of social hilarity to the highest degree. As a wintry evening drew on, the wide, deep fireplace—equalling in width nearly the whole of one side of the room, and so deep that benches were permanently attached to the jambs, on which two or ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... controul, perpetually led him into difficulties from which his ingenuity alone could extricate him; and the accumulating pile of debts of honour and of trade, which would have bent to earth any other, was supported by him with a light spirit and tameless hilarity; while his company was so necessary at the tables and assemblies of the rich, that his derelictions were considered venial, and he himself received with ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... into such apoplectic entanglements that we were often obliged to beat him on the back with portmanteaus before we could recover him." Immediately on their return, refreshed and invigorated by this wholesome hilarity and enjoyment, he threw himself into the composition of his next book, and the first number of "Martin ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... well at Singapore and Sarawak, and so responsible also from having consecrated you to the Lord, that I must write. I have taken the liberty with you which Mr. Cecil took with me in 1801, to caution you, now you are a chief pastor and a father in God, against excessive hilarity of spirits. There is a mild gravity, with occasional tokens of delight and pleasure, becoming your sacred ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... at York was attended and followed, as that at London had been, with banquets and public parades, and grand celebrations of all sorts, which continued for several successive days, and the hilarity and joy which these shows awakened among the crowds that assembled to witness them seemed to indicate a universal acquiescence on the part of the people of England in Richard's ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... servant who told her friend that "Queen Victoria was so rich that she had a piano in her kitchen." Generally the conversational topics of the villagers seemed to be people and prices. Undoubtedly, I was told, the subjects which were most popular, "because they provoked hilarity," were family discords and sexual questions. One man with whom I spoke about the morality of the village said cautiously, "They say there are some ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... These members of the City Band repaired at once to their platform in the corner. At every instant they laughed uproariously among themselves, joshing one of their number, a Frenchman, whom they called "Skeezicks." Their hilarity reverberated in a hollow, metallic roll among the rafters overhead. The druggist observed to young Vacca as he passed by that he thought them ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... sentiment," said good Dr. Burge, brimming over with an honest hilarity,—"a toast which I should be willing to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... indeed, I hazarded, through their fathers, some little complimentary observations in Latin; but I cannot say that I found that language lend itself readily to the gallantries of the ball-room. After supper dancing recommenced, and the hilarity of the evening reached its highest pitch when half a dozen sailors, dressed in turbans made of flags (one of them a lady with the face of the tragic muse), came forward and danced the cancan, with a gravity and decorum that would have greatly edified what ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... these modern gyrations in my home," had responded Harriet's mother, Mrs. Sproul, as she finished the hundredth round on the shawl she was knitting. Harriet's report of the conversation had been received with great hilarity that evening at dinner ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... police duty, no jeering was so destructive to the feelings as Billie's comment. If Billie got a call to appear at the headquarters, none would so genially prophesy his complete undoing as Dan. Small misfortunes to one were, in truth, invariably greeted with hilarity by the other, who seemed to see in them great re-enforcement of ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... unknown intruders, and mingled again with a merry group who were pelting one another with comfits and candied almonds. The stately Elizabeth beckoned to her maidens; but they merely curtsied to their royal mistress, without discontinuing their boisterous hilarity. Indeed, the mumming hitherto had been more in dress than manners, so little restraint had their outward disguise occasioned, or their behaviour been altered thereby. The two late comers, however, produced a change. It appeared that their business was to enact a play or cunning device for the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... there are gleams of hilarity too; little snatches of encouragement granted even to a Governor. 'Once my Lord Abbot and I, coming down from London through the Forest, I inquired of an old woman whom we came up to, Whose wood this was, and of what manor; who the master, who the keeper?'—All ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... kitchen fire. There was water by the window in a milk-pail. He poured some in a basin, washed his face and hands and found the water cold enough to hurt his face. Still his excitement kept him keyed to a pitch of singular and optimistic hilarity. Through the kitchen window came the pale glimmer of snow. He hoped Hughie wouldn't hear him harnessing Nellie, and shoot at the barn. The possibility sent him to the kitchen stairway. It wound upward in an old-fashioned twist to ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... large number of Scotch navvies were at the inns of the town, making an obstreperous auroval in celebration of the monthly pay-day. They had received the day preceding a month's wages, and they were now drinking up their money with the most reckless hilarity; swallowing the pay of five long hours at the pick in a couple of gills of whiskey. How strange that men can work in rain, cold and heat at the shovel for a whole day, then drink up the whole in two hours at the gin-shop! ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... its unopened quarries. So incorrigible an optimist was Milton Caukins that any slight degree of success, which might attend the promotion of any one of his numerous schemes, caused an elation that amounted to hilarity. On the other hand, the deadly blight of non-fulfilment, that annually attacked his most cherished hopes for the future development of his native town, failed in any wise to depress him, or check ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... walked or rather danced along on each side, elated and excited with the sense of the present divinity, yet pleasantly free from any abject awe. The whole thing indeed reminded one of some bas-relief of a Bacchanalian procession carved on a Greek sarcophagus—and especially so in its hilarity and suggestion of friendly intimacy with the god. There were singing of hymns and the floating of the chief actors on a raft round a sacred lake. And then came the final Act. Siva, or his image, very weighty and borne on the shoulders of strong men, was carried into the first chamber ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... accompanied by songs whose jerking discords were most laughable; story-tellers recited tales in a high key, and the running about and splashing close to my room never ceased. Late at night my precarious shoji were accidentally thrown down, revealing a scene of great hilarity, in which a number of people were bathing and throwing water ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... necessarily a week of hard work, culminating in the task of getting all details into perfect marching order, and setting every item in readiness for the start at dawn. This done, the British predilection for "letting off steam" resulted in a night of uproarious hilarity, incomprehensible to those ignorant of the conditions which gave it birth, and unable to realise its tonic effect on men who are setting out to face danger, hardship, and ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... The spirit of hilarity and good fellowship, however, who suddenly discovered this error on the part of Nature, rectified it, as will be ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... no idea what a noise you are making," she said, greeting the stranger. "I had just come in from a guild meeting, and the unusual illumination and the sounds of hilarity were too much for my curiosity." Here her glance rested in evident ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard

... galravitch, both at hack and manger, in a very expensive manner to the funds of the town. I therefore resolved to set my face against this for the future; and accordingly, when we had enjoyed a jocose temperance of loyalty and hilarity, with a decent measure of wine, I filled a glass, and requesting all present to do the same, without any preliminary reflections on the gavaulling of past times, I drank good afternoon to each severally, and then rose from the table, in a way that put ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... her side, except for a dance with Martie and one with Sally. After a while he and Rose went out to sit on the stairs. Alvah grew noisy and familiar, and Martie did not know quite how to meet his hilarity, although she tried. She was afraid the echoes of his wild laugh would greet her father's ears, if he had come in and was upstairs, and that Pa might do ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... Doubtless he was suddenly attacked by his malady, and had hidden himself in the hay, as he was accustomed to do, in order not to frighten and distress his family. Thus ended, in a tragic way, a life as strange as himself, a mixture of gloom and folly, of horror and hilarity, amid which his heart remained always kind ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... and our caller left us finishing our breakfast, and I recollect that for some time none of us spoke. Our recent unseemly hilarity had vanished. ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... picturesque. Flickering lights, gay laughter—sometimes curses and the sounds of revolver shots, of battles fought close and quick and to a finish—wheezy music, click of ivory chips, the clink of glasses, from old Bonanza's and similar rendezvous of hilarity lured to the dance, faro, roulette, the poker table or ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman

... and shut their eyes; Caroline Howard received a gold chain from her mamma, and a pretty pin from Elsie; Lucy, a set of coral ornaments, besides several smaller presents; and others were equally fortunate. All was mirth and hilarity; only one clouded face to be seen, and that belonged to Enna, who was pouting in a corner because Mary Leslie's doll was a ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley

... The hilarity of the Harmony rooters increased when Oldsmith, right halfback, crashed through left tackle for a gain of 8 yards, dragging a couple of Chester tacklers with him. Hutchings plunged straight ahead for 6 yards more, and the ball was then on Chester's ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... problems did not exclusively occupy his mind, for the present Marchesa Peruzzi has more than one laughing reminiscence of this saintly father, who at one time challenged his pupil to hop around the large table on one foot. The hilarity of the festivity was not lessened when the Reverendo himself joined in the frolic, his robes flapping around him, as they all contributed to the merriment. The Marchesa has many a dainty note written to her ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... by the Robec river, near the church of St. Maclou, will not be easily forgotten. Thus you see of what various, strange, and striking objects the city of Rouen is composed. Bustle, noise, life and activity, in the midst of an atmosphere unsullied by the fumes of sea coal:—hilarity and apparent contentment:—the spruce bourgeoise and the slattern fille de chambre:—attired in vestments of deep crimson and dark blue—every thing flits before you as if touched by magic, and as if sorrow and misfortune were unknown ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... from the pool room were louder, more distinct now, even rising once into a shout of boisterous hilarity; but there was no other sound. The round, white ray of Jimmie Dale's flashlight circled the room suddenly, inquisitively—and went out. It was a bare, squalid place, dirty, filthy, disreputable. There ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... very cheerful birthday tea, though each one of the trio tried to do his or her best to promote innocent hilarity. Elizabeth talked a great deal, but her face was still flushed, and she rather avoided her lover's eyes, and as for David he talked principally to Dinah. He told funny little parish stories which made her laugh, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... "What is the matter with Cousin Le Gardeur?" Her eyes were fixed upon him as he read a note just handed to him by a servant. He crushed it in his hand with a flash of anger, and made a motion as if about to tear it, but did not. He placed it in his bosom. But the hilarity of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... were all stopped up by figures of natives, who took possession of these points of vantage to gaze to their hearts' content on the sahib, who, with signs of evident suspense on the part of these spectators, managed even to shave. Hilarity, on the other hand, was caused when I smeared myself all over with soap while bathing. Admiration followed at my putting on my last starched shirt and other mysterious garments, but the excitement ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... mighty solemn-faced cuss, young feller," he said, with drunken hilarity; "have a drink with me, and don't be so —— high and mighty. I'm a damned good sort when you know ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke

... many-sided; he was a master not only of the smile, but of the laugh. He is the gayest of writers, and his farces, in their wild hilarity, their contagious absurdity, are perfect models of what a farce should be. He has made these light, frivolous, happy things as eternal as the severest and the weightiest works of man. He has filled them ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... had a thick packet of ribbons in one of his gesticulating hands. He was flushed, vociferous, and somewhat insolent. Like Everett, he was not analyzing the acclamation that greeted everything he said; applause had made him drunk. But under the hilarity of his listeners there was considerable enthusiasm for the man himself. The Duke perceived it, for he realized what times had come upon the State. Spinney's bombast expressed the protest that was abroad. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... all the way down the road trees, bushes, and grass were spangled with cob-webs, shining with tiny pricks and gems of moisture. These damp, mildewy nights that irritate us and bring that queer soft grayish fur on the backs of our books seem to mean high hilarity and big business to the spider. Along the hedge near the station there were wonderful great webs, as big as the shield of Achilles. What a surprising passion of engineering the spider must go through in the dark hours, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... amid general hilarity, and afterward Grandma took Marjorie up to her own room, and they had a little ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells

... would leave in a body. They adore me. If he'd tried to stop my allowance, I should have gone on the stage—we've settled that point once and for all with Harry Manders, half-way through the stage-door of the Hilarity. Now I've got my own money. Mind you, I adore father, and he adores me; most people adore me; but I must do what I like. You see that now; but I had to shew you, I had to break my way ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... should more properly designate it as mistaken piety—is another peculiar manifestation of the effects of this vicious practice. The victim is observed to become transformed, by degrees, from a romping, laughing child, full of hilarity and frolic, to a sober and very sedate little—Christian, the friends think, and they are highly gratified with the piety of the child. Little do they suspect the real cause of the solemn face; not the slightest suspicion have they of the foul orgies practiced by the little sinner. By the ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... think I can imagine," said the Penitentiary, leaning back in his chair and laughing with boisterous hilarity. ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... whereby Major Tobias Clutterbuck had successfully screwed a thousand pounds out of the firm of Girdlestone, it is quite certain that that gentleman's seasoned conscience did not reproach him in the least degree. On the contrary, his whole being seemed saturated and impregnated with the wildest hilarity and delight. Twice in less than a hundred yards, he was compelled to stop and lean upon his cane owing to the breathlessness which supervened upon his attempts to smother the delighted chuckles which came surging up from the inmost ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... all restraint, and laughed and laughed. After the emperor had laughed hilarity was permissible. Her pleasure was beyond ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... that, do what it will, it is always poor human nature. It is, not to despise it too much, however, this common humanity, at which one laughs, of which one is, and into which we throw ourselves through a healthful hilarity ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... characters, the gods, the Brahmins, and the kings, speak Sanskrit; women and the less important characters speak Prakrit, more or less refined according to their rank. Whatever may offend propriety, whatever may produce an unwholesome excitement, is excluded; for the hilarity of the audience, there is an occasional introduction on the stage of a parasite or a buffoon. The representation is usually opened by an apologue and always ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... family now sat down to breakfast, after which they all went to church, where the doctor performed divine service. A large party of friends and neighbors returned with them to dinner, and the remainder of the day was spent in hilarity and innocent enjoyment. ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes

... for an apple. Outside all was truly calm and still, as, with mock and exaggerated caution, they peered through one last open window. A periodic, lazy flash from the far distance was all that the sky could muster of its earlier wrath. And they tripped upstairs and to bed, with that hilarity which always attends the feminine ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... long wished for spot, and in order to add in some measure to the general pleasure which seemed to pervade our little community, we ordered a dram to be issued to each person; this soon produced the fiddle, and they spent the evening with much hilarity, singing & dancing, and seemed as perfectly to forget their past toils, as they appeared regardless of those to come. in the evening, the man I had sent up the river this morning returned, and reported that he had ascended it about eight miles on a streight line; that he found it crooked, meandering ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... chieftains and queens of Tidewater and their retinues were invited, and attended in ceremonial regalia. That there was not only formal recognition of the important day, but much firing of arms, drinking and hilarity on the ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester

... once had set fire to his house from sheer wickedness. So that when he was borne back to the village on a grass bier and the women of his house decked themselves with green leaves and arm in arm staggered and stamped through the village street in their death dance, there was a suspicion of hilarity in their song, and a more cheery step in their dance than ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace

... anxiously wondering what was going to happen to the ship, he suddenly became the brightest individual on board. For a man to be moody and distraught while danger was impending was not at all surprising; but for a man, right in the midst of gloom, to blossom suddenly out into a general hilarity of manner, was something extraordinary. People thought it must be a case of brain trouble. They watched the young man with interest as he walked with a springy step up and down the deck. Every now and again a bright smile illuminated his face, and then ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr

... possibly cast its glamour upon the adventure. He admired also the just and perfectly characteristic air of grief in the bereaved husband and father,—those occasional escapes from the sense of loss into a brief hilarity and forgetfulness, and those relapses into the hovering gloom, which every one has observed in this poor, crazy human nature when oppressed by sorrow, and which it would have been hard to simulate. But, above all, he exulted in that supreme stroke of the imagination ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... the youngest—consequently the most noisy and showily dressed—laughing loudly, gesticulating violently, and bragging tremendously. Near to them were collected a number of sterner spirits—men of middle age, with all the energy, and muscle, and bone of youth, but without its swaggering hilarity; men whose powers and nerves had been tried over and over again amid the stirring scenes of a voyageur's life; men whose heads were cool, and eyes sharp, and hands ready and powerful, in the mad whirl of boiling rapids, in the sudden attack of wild beast and hostile man, or in the unexpected ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... Stage [by one of the Inferior Doors of the Palace] the Steward of Admetus: he has stolen away to get a moment's respite from the hateful hilarity of this strange visitor—some ruffian or robber he supposes—on whom his office has condemned him to wait, and thereby to miss paying the last offices to a mistress who has been more like a mother to him. The guest has been willing to enter, and though he saw ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... effect from his potations beyond a growing exhilaration; now, however, the wine was taking toll, and Lorelei felt a certain pity for him. Waste is shocking; it grieved her to see a man so blessed with opportunity flinging himself away so fatuously. The hilarity which greeted him on every hand spoke of misspent nights and a reckless prodigality that betokened long habitude. Only his splendid constitution—that abounding vitality which he had inherited from sturdy, temperate forebears—enabled him to keep up the pace; but Lorelei saw that he ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... hilarity to see the Reverend Goodman standing on his head, trying to lose a red-hot silver dollar; and Daisy Snow, whose debutante frock was available for the purpose, wriggled beneath the tickling crawling of ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells

... There was the house before us, a small oblong stone house, with not a tree to screen it from the cutting wind; but how were we to get at it from the churchyard we could not see! There was an old man in the churchyard, brooding like a Ghoul over the graves, with a sort of grim hilarity on his face. I thought he looked hardly human; however, he was human enough to tell us the way; and presently we found ourselves in the little bare parlour. Presently the door opened, and in came a superannuated mastiff, followed by ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... the spirit of these sports, we throw off some of the restraints of a more formal intercourse; but they furnish no excuse for rudeness. You must not forget your politeness in your hilarity, or allow yourself to "take liberties," or lose your ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... was known in the earliest ages; and probably it was opium that Helen mixed with wine, and gave to the guests of Menelaus, under the expressive name of Nepenthe, to drown their cares, and encrease their hilarity. This conjecture, in a considerable degree, is supported from the fact, that Homer's Nepenthe was procured from the Egyptian Thebes, whence the tincture of opium, according to the nomenclature of the pharmacopeia ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... under cover of the whitening-brush—and not to talk of his cook, ours being not yet hired ;-and not to start the subject of wine, ours, by some odd accident, still remaining at the wine-merchant's! With all these impediments, however, to convivial hilarity, if he will eat a quarter of a joint of meat (his share, I mean), tied up by a packthread, and roasted by a log of wood on the bricks,—and declare no potatoes so good as those dug by M. d'Arblay out of our garden,—and ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... congratulations; the prison garb was exchanged for citizen's dress, and they were taken in carriages to the police prison of Brunn, where comfortable apartments, good food, free intercourse, books, and newspapers awaited them. Imagine the vividness of their sensations, the hilarity of feeling inspired by the first sight of scenes and objects associated with their youth! It was like a new birth. To grasp the hands and hear the voices of their fellow-creatures,—to behold streets, caffs, and shops, the tokens of industry, the insignia ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... slowest of foot-paces, and we were constantly brought to a complete stop for some minutes before the post-boy could force a passage through the unwilling crowd. This produced a feeling of irritation, and despair of ever reaching my destination; and the mirth and careless hilarity of the people round us chafed with bitter contrast on my depressed spirits. I inquired from the post-boy what was the origin of so great a commotion, and understood him to say in reply that it was a religious festival ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... is curious. But I suppose my husband is much more economical than yours, for he brought home $1.500, that he'd saved out of his salary.' As the salary is only $456, and the gentleman in question did not play poker, much hilarity was indulged in, and there were conjectures that the economy referred to concerned his vote upon a certain bill before the last session, anent which the lobby pushing it were far from economical. Uncle Billy Rollinson, the Gentleman from Wixinockee, heard the story, as it passed from mouth ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... upon, mobbed, hustled, mussed and finally ejected from the door with a battered hat and torn coat collar. Every other broking office in the Street has a pictorial caricature hanging over its ticker of his hesitancy and timidity, his rash venture, his silly and short-lived hilarity, his speedy and inevitable ruin, and his final departure, with his face distorted by rage and grief, and his ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... troubles sit upon him, if troubles he ever had, for he seemed to be in the highest spirits. Society kept him ever in a state of effervescent hilarity, so that he never let anything trouble him. At this time he was making at the Bar seven or eight thousand a year, and consequently, I thought, must be the ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... that, they expressed their astonishment in loud and frightened chirping. All over and no harm done, the bird lover burst into a peal of laughter at the discomfiture of his feathered neighbors, who looked at him as if they did not know what to make of his untimely hilarity. ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... When this hilarity had subsided, Mr. Wackernagel turned to Mr. Fairchilds with a question. "Are you mebbe feelin' oneasy, Teacher, about meetin' the school directors to-night? You know they meet here in the HOtel parlor at seven o'clock to take a ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin

... laughed loudly at what he considered wit. But a frowning glance from the Tzigana cut short his hilarity; and, with a mechanical movement, he drew himself up in a military manner, as if the Czar were ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... judgment-seat amused her, and the glimpse she had caught of her brother's portentous gravity curled her up like a cigarette paper. But he was too shocked for speech, and Mildred strove to curb her hilarity. ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... hectic flush like a pair of burns on his cheek-bones, stared for a moment and burst out laughing too. Razumov, whose hilarity died out all at once, made a ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... high glee, light heart; sunshine of the mind, sunshine of the breast; gaiete de coeur [Fr.], bon naturel [Fr.]. liveliness &c adj.; life, alacrity, vivacity, animation, allegresse^; jocundity, joviality, jollity; levity; jocularity &c (wit) 842. mirth, merriment, hilarity, exhilaration; laughter &c 838; merrymaking &c (amusement) 840; heyday, rejoicing &c 838; marriage bell. nepenthe, Euphrosyne^, sweet forgetfulness. optimism &c (hopefulness) 858; self complacency; hedonics^, hedonism. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... walking on the terrace of Versailles; the fairest, not only of Queens, but of women, hung fondly on the Royal arm; while the children of France were indulging in their infantile hilarity in the alleys of the magnificent garden of Le Notre (from which Niblo's garden has been copied in our own Empire city of New York), and playing at leap-frog with their uncle, the Count of Provence; gaudy courtiers, emlazoned with orders, glittered in the groves, and murmured frivolous talk ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... rude meal, Regnar broke the silence; for it may well be believed that no great hilarity pervaded the ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... "Blood-stained Tower" is therefore always in its place, and the "Assassin's Door" and "Ghost's Window" do not change places, to the bewilderment of the keen-witted reader. Many writers, on the other hand, show an extraordinary carelessness, or, shall I say, agility? "Hilarity Hall" or "Stucco Castle" is supposed to be a firm erection, capable of withstanding storm, or, if necessary, siege; whereas the artist too often detects the author turning it inside out and upside down to suit his convenience, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... hoped that Ali's avarice would hesitate at this high price, but he was not so easily discouraged. He give a banquet for the Lord High Commissioner, which degenerated into a shameless orgy. In the midst of this drunken hilarity the Turk and the Englishman disposed of the territory of Parga; agreeing that a fresh estimate should be made on the spot by experts chosen by both English and Turks. The result of this valuation was that the indemnity granted to the Christians was ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... the Palace, the ice king, the snow; Around them let mirth and hilarity flow, Hurrah for our Governor, country, and main, And God bless our loved Queen, and ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby

... things that passed your comprehension, and he let you be. For Ransome the world of men brought respite. Even at home, in that world of women, of one woman, when things (he meant the one woman) were too much for him, menacing his as yet invincible hilarity, he could turn his back on them, and work in the garden or play with the Baby. Or he could leave them for a while and mount his bicycle and ride out into the open country. For Ransome life still ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... the evening by telling in sesquipedalian language a long tale of an alleged adventure of his with my father, which, inasmuch as there was no point to it, need not be rehearsed here; but I noticed that Bennoch was for some reason hugely diverted by it, and found difficulty in keeping his hilarity within due bounds of decorum, Hall's tone being all the while of the most earnest gravity. Later I took occasion to ask Bennoch the secret of his mirth; was the tale a fiction? "Not a bit of it," Bennoch ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... students began to caper with a sort of decorous hilarity before their teacher. " Look at the sausage, professor. Did you ever see such sausage " Isn't it salubrious " And see these other things, sir. Aren't they curious " I shouldn't wonder if they were alive. Turnips, sir? No, sir. I think they are Pharisees. ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... two days—realizing on a wintry dawn that they had been the noisiest and most conspicuous members of the noisiest and most conspicuous party at the Boul' Mich', or the Club Ramee, or at other resorts much less particular about the hilarity of their clientele. They would find that they had, somehow, squandered eighty or ninety dollars, how, they never knew; they customarily attributed it to the general penury of the "friends" who ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... Ferry's duds on and Larkin's best tile and Pierce's umbrella, we bundled in somehow and drove on down the levee, leaving Doyle in the hands of that Amazon of a wife of his and a couple of doughboys who happened to be around there. Now Lascelles was all hilarity, singing, joking, confidential. Nothing would do but we must stop and call on a lovely woman, a belle amie. He could rely on our discretion, he said, laying his finger on his nose, and looking sly and coquettish, for all ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King

... all come trooping in to breakfast, in coloured blazers and fancy blouses, laughing and grabbing at the food with mimic rudeness and bursts of hilarity. And to think that I might have been breakfasting at my club with the morning paper propped against the coffee-pot, in a silent room in the quiet ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... merely sprinkled his brow; he was baptized by immersion. His notes are not many; but in them Nature herself sings. He is a sparrow that half sings, half chirps, on a bush, not a lark that floods with orient hilarity the skies of morning; but the bush burns, like that which Moses saw, and the sparrow herself is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... some of them were stiff and a little "creaky in the joints," but this only added to the general hilarity, and at one o'clock the fun was ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope

... Society who make covert attacks upon the Bible in the name of Science." He warmed to his theme, and by a specious series of misstatements and various appeals to the prejudices of his audience worked the assemblage up to a high pitch of hilarity and enthusiasm. Toward the close of his speech he happened to spy Huxley seated near, and pointing a pudgy finger at him, "begged to be informed if the learned gentleman was really willing to be regarded as ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... itself out and was placed upon its feet once more. It was excessively pleased with its exploit. Hilarity reigned. Corporal Smith, relieved, made ready to conduct his squad ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... first act. The committee were tired and, to speak frankly, cross, with the exception of Madeline, who was provokingly cool and nonchalant, though she had worked harder than any one else. The cast were infected with that irresponsible hilarity that always attacks an amateur company at their last rehearsal. They danced about the stage, getting in the way of the committee, shrieking with laughter at their first glimpses of one another's costumes, and making flippant ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... on horseback, now galloping over open campos, anon threading their way through the forest, and sometimes toiling slowly up the mountain sides. The aspect of the country varied continually as they advanced, and the feelings of excessive hilarity with which they commenced the journey began to subside as ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... Harp, yesterday, was composed of many delicacies of the season, including bread-and-cheese and onions. The hilarity of the evening was highly increased by the admirable style in which Signor Jonesi ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... people wore their Sunday clothes, but they had doffed the Sunday manners and air. There was more of a suggestion of Saturday night in the streets; the suggestion that a tremendous number of people were going to enjoy a "spree" of some kind. A kind of noisy hilarity, combined with a general desire for cigars, drinks, singing, and gaiety, seemed to ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... all the inmates. And we can well imagine that when all were at home, an Indian lodge was anything else than a house of silence. Of a winter evening, for instance, with the fires blazing brightly, there was a vast deal of boisterous hilarity, in which the deep guttural tones of the men and the shrill voices of the squaws were intermingled. Around the fires there were endless gossiping, story-telling, and jesting. Jokes, by no means delicate and decidedly personal, provoked uproarious laughter, in ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... Only the idea of it!—to tell a young child that story! Why—what would the baby have thought I meant? Fie for shame of yourself, that's what I say!" A very small amount of indignation leavened a good deal of hilarity in this. The old lady enjoyed the joke immensely. That she, at eighty, should tell a child of seven a tale of nuptial infidelity! She took her great-grandson into her confidence about it, asking him:—"Did they say his great-grandmother told shocking stories to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... getting up for the matches, and was afraid I should frighten the servants overhead with my explosions. When the gas was lit I found the room empty, of course, and the door locked as usual. Then I half dressed and went out on to the landing, my hilarity better under control, and proceeded to go downstairs. I wished to record my sensations. I stuffed a handkerchief into my mouth so as not to scream aloud and communicate my hysterics to ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... reflection on chalybeates and the rest, it must be allowed that the most popular beverage in Mudhall at present is that which draws its virtue from a cereal and not a mineral source. Hilarity is rife at all hours, and the effort to enlist a body of local volunteers to control the exuberance of anti-Sabbatarian "charabankers" is meeting with unexpected support. The casualties in the daily collisions between the Hydropathic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various

... a piece of wood, and discussing the merits of the different Yankee prisons at New Orleans or Chicago. One of them, seeing me, called out, "I reckon, Kernel, if the Yankees catch you with us, they'll say you're in d——d bad company;" which sally caused universal hilarity. ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... displeasure, as he sits, occupied by his silent reflections and thoroughly unregardful of whatever occurs around him. Two ladies who are his companions in the apartment, exert all their blandishments to win him back to hilarity, but in vain. The services of his expectant musicians are not put into requisition, the delicacies on his table remain untouched, and even 'the inestimable kitten of the breed most worshipped by the ancient Egyptians' gambols unnoticed and unapplauded at ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... a moment there was the greatest consternation. Whole regiments broke and fled in wild confusion. Cutshaw's men stood up, seized their muskets, and stood at attention till it was known that the ammunition had been purposely fired and no enemy was threatening the line. Then what laughter and hilarity prevailed, for a while, ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy

... interested—genuinely. He, because he knows New York a little, and I because I don't. I am an elderly man, and have spent my life buried in my books in drowsy villages. Pray go on. Your American slang has frequently a delightful meaning—a fantastic hilarity, or common sense, or philosophy, hidden in its origin. In that it generally differs from English slang, which—I regret to say—is usually founded on some silly catch word. Pray go on. When you see a new book by Mr. Kipling, you are ready to 'separate ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... with unreal thanks which could not conceal her recognition of the impromptu pretext for getting rid of her; her uncle called a taxicab, and with harsh hilarity turned her off the premises in the frock she had ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... singular mishap. One morning, being in clumsy-fingered haste to get to a train, I summarily dropped my bonnet into the wash-bowl. This was not a very dry joke, but having mopped up the article as well as possible, I put it on and departed with usual hilarity,—still remembering what it was to have the kindest fortune in the world, and that one should not expect so rare a life as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... dear! That's a pity," said the old lady, with a pretty flight of hilarity. "Still, I hope you'll ask us to the wedding. I've known Richard since he was a week old. Haven't I, Mrs. Yaverland? He was the loveliest baby I've ever seen, and later on I think the handsomest boy. Nobody ever looked at my Billy or George when Richard was about. And now—well, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... that on its fellow, where many have jollity moderated by business cares, others reserved in lofty consciousness that they are on foreign pleasure bent. With the gold seeker, especially the "tenderfoot," there is an incessant social hilarity, a communion of feeling, an ardent anticipation that cannot be dormant, continually bubbling over. We had on board upward of seven hundred, comprising a variety of tongues and nations. The bustle and turmoil incident to getting ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... in the direction of the town. As he approached the place the blaring of cornets and sounds of hilarity reminded him that Quelquepart was holding its annual foire. Merry-go-rounds and swing-boats were not in harmony with Chippo's mood, and the performance at the gaudily-painted Guignol struck him as particularly dreary, but the sight of Ferdinand Delauney's Grande ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various

... of old, when writers bold Betrayed the least disparity Between their genius and an age When frankness was a rarity, An odious word was often heard From critics void of charity, Simplicity or clarity, Or vision or hilarity, Who used to slate or deprecate The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various

... Languedoc, which exhibited all the glories of the vintage, with the gaieties of a French festival, no longer awakened St. Aubert to pleasure, whose condition formed a mournful contrast to the hilarity and youthful beauty which surrounded him. As his languid eyes moved over the scene, he considered, that they would soon, perhaps, be closed for ever on this world. 'Those distant and sublime mountains,' said he secretly, as he gazed on a chain of ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... by a recent circumstance, which showed that all the ancestral spirit was not dead in the breast of Britannicus. During the festivities of the Saturnalia, which were kept by the ancients with all the hilarity of the modern Christmas, Nero had been elected by lot as "governor of the feast," and, in that capacity, was entitled to issue his orders to the guests. To the others he issued trivial mandates which would not make them blush; but Britannicus in violation ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... round in merry dance beneath flaming lanterns suspended from the roof. Two hundred Christmas boxes were found packed on board, parting gifts of friends and acquaintances. For these lots were drawn, and many amusing surprises excited general hilarity. So the polka was danced on the deck, while cold reigned outside and snow whizzed through the frozen rigging. For supper there was ham and Christmas ale, just as at home in Sweden. Old well-known songs echoed through the saloon, and ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... "cissers," crackers that had failed to burn out entirely, and still had a little explosive merit when touched by a piece of lighted punk. There was no school that day, and Steve took them up to West Farms to expend the rest of their hilarity. The little girl was pale and languid. Mrs. Underhill was quite troubled at times when ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... when Estenega talked; and he had come to Fort Ross only to have a conversation with his one-time enemy. As he listened to Estenega, shorn, for the time-being, of his air of dictator and watchful ambition, a man of the world taking an enthusiastic part in the hilarity of the hour, but never sacrificing his dignity by assuming the role of chief entertainer, there grew within him a dull sense of inferiority: he felt, rather than knew, that neither the city of Mexico nor gratified ambitions would give him that assured ease, that ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... to laugh. The room rang with shouts of laughter. The blue eyes of the Professor's daughters were swimming over with laughter-tears, their clear cheeks were flushed crimson with mirth, their father broke out in the most astonishing peals of hilarity, the students bowed their heads on their knees in excess of joy. Ursula looked round amazed, the laughter was bubbling out of her involuntarily. She looked at Gudrun. Gudrun looked at her, and the two ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... departed as cheerfully for modest homes in obscure neighbourhoods that seemed to me areas of exile. They were troubled with no visions of better things. When the travelling men came in from the "road" there was great hilarity. Important personages, these, looked up to by the city clerks; jolly, reckless, Elizabethan-like rovers, who had tasted of the wine of liberty—and of other wines with the ineradicable lust for the road in their blood. No more routine for Jimmy Bowles, who was king ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... attention. My tutor a while reproached me with negligence, and repressed my sallies with supercilious gravity; yet, having natural good-humour lurking in his heart, he could not long hold out against the power of hilarity, but after a few months began to relax the muscles of disciplinarian moroseness, received me with smiles after an elopement, and, that he might not betray his trust to his fondness, was content to spare my diligence ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... present was the summum bonum of her wishes. She almost danced along the road from school, and behaved so jubilantly in the bus that Winnie had to interfere, and give her a hint to restrain her hilarity before the other passengers. She rushed into the Parsonage like a cyclone, and flung her satchel ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... great amount of hilarity in the preparation for this event, and a long council in Emma Jane's attic. They had the soap company's circular from which to arrange a proper speech, and they had, what was still better, the remembrance of a certain patent-medicine vender's discourse at the ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... be no contemptible specimen of genius. Whenever a member had the audacity to perpetrate some shocking bad pun, and such enormities were frequent, the offender was sentenced to undergo some ludicrous punishment; and the utmost good-humor and hilarity ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson

... pronounced success, marked by much suppressed hilarity among the younger members of the party. Uncle James ate very heartily and seemed to enjoy everything, especially ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... of his bliss, and surrounded by bands of immortals, the news runs through the electric wire that his earth-wife is deceased, and has come in search of him. The consternation and fear of the poor man furnishes ample occasion for amusement, hilarity, ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... discover that my mussulman hat-band has mysteriously disappeared, and when preparing to depart, a miscellaneous collection of females gather about me, seize the bicycle, and with much boisterous hilarity refuse to let me depart until I have given each one of them some money; their behavior is on the whole so outrageous, that I appeal to my patient of yesterday evening, in whose bosom I fancy I may perchance have kindled a spark ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... a-head, the boatmen turned round, while Dobbs, casting up his eyes to the blue heavens, was singing, in the hilarity of his heart, "Hearts as warm as those above, lie under the waters cold," when the boat heeled, and his duck, who unfortunately could not swim, slipped gently over the gunwhale, and, unnoticed, sank ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... Shon McGann. The man brooded and looked mysterious. Mystery was not pleasing to Trafford. He had his own secrets, but in the ordinary affairs of life he preferred simplicity. In one of the silences that fell between Shon's attempts to give hilarity to the occasion, there came a rumbling far-off sound, a sound that increased in volume till the earth beneath them responded gently to the vibration. Trafford looked up inquiringly at Pierre, and then at the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker



Words linked to "Hilarity" :   mirthfulness, hilarious, gleefulness, merriment, mirth, gaiety



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