overjoy

overjoyverb

• 1

  To give great joy, delight or pleasure to.

  • The prospect of writing three exams in a row without a break does not overjoy me.
  • This salutation ouerioyes my heart.
• 2

  rareTo give too much joy to.

  • Ah, child, thou art but half thy darling mother’s; / Hers couldst thou wholly be, / My light in thee would outglow all in others; / She would relive to me. / But niggard Nature’s trick of birth / Bars, lest she overjoy, / Renewal of the loved on earth / Save with alloy.
• 3

  obsoleteTo take too much pleasure (in something).

  • 1598, John Wilbye, The First Set of English Madrigals, London: Thomas Este, Madrigal , Your deeds my hart surchargd with ouerioying:
  • it is hard not to ouer-ioy in a sudden prosperitie, and, to vse happinesse is no lesse difficult, then to forbeare it

overjoynoun

• 1

  Very great joy.

  • to salute my king / With ruder terms, such as my wit affords / And over-joy of heart doth minister
  • a. 1631, John Donne, Letter to Robert Karre in Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, London: Richard Marriot, 1651, p. 299, I beginne to bee past hope of dying: And I feele that a little ragge of Monte Magor, which I read last time I was in your Chamber, hath wrought prophetically upon mee, which is, that Death came so fast towards mee, that the over-joy of that recovered mee.
• 2

  Excessive joy.

  • Restraint of the organs of sense, on which success in study and discipline depends, can be enforced by abandoning lust, anger, greed, vanity (māna), haughtiness (mada) and overjoy (harṣa).
  • The knowledge that some are deprived tempers overjoy or overdesire.