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''bliss'' ▫ᴱᴺ|Definition|1st|20260125123911-00-⌔

bliss - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

bliss (countable and uncountable, plural blisses)

  • Perfect happiness.
    • The afternoon at the spa was utter bliss.
    • ✤ * Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,/But to be young was very heaven!*1
    • What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly, by a feeling of bliss —absolute bliss!—as though you’d suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe?2
    • When they insist on knowing my bliss
      I tell them this
      When they want to know what the reason is
      I only smile when I lie, then I tell them why
      3
    • So who is this saying that money is bliss?
      Your logic remiss
      You and the devil about to kiss
      4

Verb

bliss (third-person singular simple present blisses, present participle blissing, simple past and past participle blissed)

  • (intransitive, usually used with out) To feel bliss; (by extension) to reach a state of bliss or ecstasy.
    • I’m still blissing out after our date. I had a great time.

Etymology

From Middle English bliss, from Old English bliss, variant of earlier blīds, blīþs (“joy, gladness”), from Proto-West Germanic ﹡blīþisi (“joy, goodness, kindness”).

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /blɪs/
  • Rhymes: -ɪs
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. a. 1851, William Wordsworth, “The French Revolution as It Appeared to Enthusiasts at Its Commencement”, in Henry[Hope] Reed, editor, The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Philadelphia, Pa.: Hayes & Zell, […], published 1860, →OCLC, page 188:

  2. 1918 August, Katherine Mansfield [pseudonym; Kathleen Mansfield Murry], “Bliss”, in Bliss and Other Stories, London: Constable & Company, published 1920, →OCLC, page 116:

  3. 1980, Daryl Hall, Janna Allen, “Kiss on My List”, in Voices, performed by Hall & Oates:

  4. 2002, CYNE, “Steady”, in Movements:

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