Home › Glossary › Letter G

gladsome

Adjective
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Gladsome means cheerful, joyful, or full of gladness, often carrying a literary or old-fashioned tone more elevated than simply “happy.”

Detailed Definition
An old or literary adjective meaning full of gladness. It appears often in older verse, but is much less common in modern speech than "happy" or "cheerful."
Example
Example in poetry:
“How ’twas gladsome, but often / Foolish, forsooth” means cheerful, joyful, or pleasantly bright; “Gladsome bells shook noon across the village roofs” uses the adjective for sound; “The child’s gladsome shout briefly undid the funeral hush” creates tonal contrast; “Though archaic in everyday speech, gladsome can lend a deliberately old-fashioned lyric music” explains its diction
Additional Notes
"Gladsome" is an uncommon literary adjective in the quoted line and may need looking up.; Found in the poem, Old Song by Edward FitzGerald
Also Known As
joyful cheerful blissful radiant
Skip to main content