gaily

adverb

ˈgā-lē How to pronounce gaily (audio)
variants also gayly
Definition of gailynext
1
as in cheerfully
in a cheerful or happy manner we sat around the table, gaily teasing each other and laughing about the good old days

Synonyms & Similar Words

Relevance

Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in lively
in a quick and spirited manner children gaily running to the buses on the last day of school

Synonyms & Similar Words

Antonyms & Near Antonyms
3
as in brightly
in a manner that is colorful and tends to arouse gaiety the Mexican dancers were gaily dressed in lavish, bright costumes

Synonyms & Similar Words

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of gaily Cicadas thrummed gaily, fields shimmered with bird and insect life. — Joyce Carol Oates, Harper's Magazine, 10 July 2023 The butterflies enter first, quivering gaily atop their sticks. — Alexis Soloski, New York Times, 30 Mar. 2023 With the Meyerson gaily festooned for the holiday season, there were lighting effects and some projections. — Dallas News, 26 Nov. 2022 To make the gamma ray bells ring out gaily, the player lifts the little lead casings that cover the materials—and can do so in a rhythmic fashion to make a strange kind of song. — Eliza Strickland, IEEE Spectrum, 24 July 2018 See All Example Sentences for gaily
Recent Examples of Synonyms for gaily
  1. cheerfully
  2. lively
  3. brightly
  4. happily
  5. playfully
  6. colorfully
  7. airily
  8. buoyantly
Adverb
  • The jokes are still wildly scattershot and frequently, knowingly lame; the production is still cheap and cheerfully scrappy; the whole ragged enterprise is still reliant on the evident affection and chemistry between its players to hold it together.
    — Guy Lodge, Variety, 5 Aug. 2026
  • Dining here is a bit like a Reddit AMA, with Bognar or fellow chefs cheerfully explaining their techniques.
    — Erika Ebsworth-Goold, Midwest Living, 3 Aug. 2026
Definition of cheerfully
Adverb
  • The peach came through clearly, though ginger kept the drink lively enough for another sip.
    — Noel Burgess, Forbes.com, 20 July 2026
  • Order a bottle of César wine – a lively dry white produced for the sister hotel in Lanzarote and only available through this collection of hotels.
    — Jonathan Samuels, TheWeek, 17 July 2026
Definition of lively
Adverb
  • Junk food is an aphrodisiac here, with KFC buckets and oodles of brightly colored brand-name candy acting as culinary counterparts to the junk cinema that’s activated something in the movie’s characters and its creator.
    — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 7 Aug. 2026
  • There’s an urge to preserve something sacred and ancient, to avoid handing everything over to our brightly lit, modern world.
    — The New Yorker, New Yorker, 7 Aug. 2026
Definition of brightly
Adverb
  • These vines will also happily wind their way around tree trunks and shrubs and fix themselves in place with small rootlets that take on a hairy appearance as poison ivy plants mature.
    — Lauren Landers, Better Homes & Gardens, 10 Aug. 2026
  • His child, who had once vomited silently in the bathtub, then gone on playing happily with her bath toys.
    — Emma Cline, New Yorker, 9 Aug. 2026
Definition of happily
Adverb
  • Teams LeBron spurned, including the Heat and Timberwolves, have seen players like Bam Adebayo and Anthony Edwards playfully vow to challenge him.
    — Bryan Toporek, Forbes.com, 31 July 2026
  • At one point, Pataky playfully shoved her husband into a waterfall.
    — Christina Dugan Ramirez, FOXNews.com, 30 July 2026
Definition of playfully
Adverb
  • The sitting room is painted in Farrow & Ball’s blush Setting Plaster and paired colorfully with a sage-green corduroy sofa and a chintz secondhand armchair.
    — Katharine Sohn, Architectural Digest, 6 Aug. 2026
  • Today, they are sold in colorfully catchy packaging in forms of powder, tablets, liquid shots, gummies, and even vapes.
    — David Manheim, Rolling Stone, 28 July 2026
Definition of colorfully
Adverb
  • Still, while these surfaces are clearly meant to reflect deeper emotional and cultural truths, Coppola’s mining of them is done glancingly, airily.
    — Naomi Fry, New Yorker, 21 Mar. 2026
Definition of airily
Adverb
  • The song's interplay between choir and orchestra is buoyantly euphoric, opening a door to bolder, more intentionally progressive and soulful sounds in the country's mainstream.
    — Marcus K. Dowling, The Tennessean, 2 May 2025
Definition of buoyantly

Browse Nearby Words

gaiety
gaily
gain
See all Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Gaily.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/gaily. Accessed 11 Aug. 2026.

Copy Citation

More from Merriam-Webster on gaily

Nglish: Translation of gaily for Spanish Speakers

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Popular in Grammar & Usage

See More

7 Pairs of Commonly Confused Words

Merriam-Webster’s Great Big List of Words You Love to Hate

Is that lie 'bald-faced' or 'bold-faced'?

'A' or 'an'? What about before 'h'? An Indefinite Article Guide

Why is '-ed' sometimes pronounced at the end of a word?
See More

Popular in Wordplay

See More

The Longest Long Words List

It's a Scorcher! Words for the Summer Heat

14 Phobias You Probably Haven't Heard Of

The Words of the Week - Aug. 7

12 Lovely and Unusual Words for the Natural World
See More

Popular

See More

7 Pairs of Commonly Confused Words

The Longest Long Words List

It's a Scorcher! Words for the Summer Heat
See More

Games & Quizzes

See All
Play Quordle: Guess all four words in a limited number of tries. Each of your guesses must be a real 5-letter word.
Quordle Can you solve 4 words at once?
Play Blossom: Solve today's spelling word game by finding as many words as you can using just 7 letters. Longer words score more points.
Blossom Pick the best words!
Play Missing Letter: a crossword with a twist. Each of the 25 puzzle words start with a different letter of the alphabet. Which letter is missing?
The Missing Letter A daily crossword with a twist
fridge-magnet-letters
Drop a Letter Quiz August 2026 Drop a letter from a word to make a totally diffe...
See All