Meaning
A keen, buoyant enjoyment of being alive; exuberant delight in living and in life's small pleasures. It is a literary, admiring loanword, usually still printed in italics and pronounced the French way, and it names a wholehearted, habitual zest rather than passing cheerfulness. English keeps the purely positive French sense. Literary and admiring in register, often italicised, and especially at home in travel, food and lifestyle writing. Regional use: General English (borrowed from French).
Origin
French for 'joy of living', built on joie (joy), de (of) and vivre (to live). The phrase circulated casually in French from at least the late 1600s, when Fénelon used it, but 19th-century writers gave it literary weight: Jules Michelet contrasted the passive life of plants with animal joie de vivre in L'Insecte (1857), and Émile Zola's novel La Joie de vivre (1883-84) carried the expression into wide literary currency. Merriam-Webster dates its first known use in English to 1889, within a few years of Zola's title, and it has stayed current ever since, spreading through lifestyle and travel writing in the 20th century.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- joie de vie
- joy of living
Usage Examples
- Even in her nineties, my grandmother retained a joie de vivre that put younger guests to shame.
- The film captures the joie de vivre of a crowded night market, all steam, noise and laughter.
- Losing the match did nothing to dim the team's joie de vivre; they sang all the way home on the bus.