cheery, a.
(ˈtʃɪərɪ)
[f. cheer n.1 + -y1. More colloquial than cheerful: in Johnson's opinion ‘a ludicrous word’.]
1. Abounding in cheerfulness; in excellent spirits, lively.
| 1611 Cotgr., s.v. Lie, To say a thing with a merrie countenance, cheerie visage, looke full of glee. 1664 Pepys Diary 5 Apr., I find him pretty cheery over what he was yesterday. 1767 Sterne Tr. Shandy (1802) III. 209 The Corporal, with cheery eye. 1820 W. Irving Sketch Bk. I. 89 She had..a stout cheery farmer for a husband. 1869 Trollope He Knew xxvi. (1878) 144 Endeavouring to speak..in a cheery voice. 1875 Mrs. Randolph W. Hyacinth I. 95 You will be in a cheerier mood to-morrow. |
2. Such as to cheer or enliven; cheering.
| c 1720 Gay Pastoral v, Come, let us hie, and quaff a cheery bowl. 1871 Carlyle in Mrs. Carlyle's Lett. III. 175 She was..a kind of cheery sunshine in those otherwise Egyptian days. |
3. Comb., as
cheery-hearted,
cheery-looking,
cheery-voiced adjs.| 1848 Mrs. Gaskell Mary Barton II. iii. 49 Her father was a cheery-hearted man. |
| 1954 J. R. R. Tolkien Fellowship of Ring i. ix. 165 A cheery-looking hobbit. |
| a 1892 Whittier Poet. Wks. (1898) 55/2, I can see his sickle gleaming, Cheery-voiced, can hear him teaming. 1913 Masefield Daffodil Fields 68 The wren upon the tree-stump carolled cheery-voiced. |