Happy International Day of Happiness!

Be happy. Or happy someone today. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, happy used to be a transitive verb meaning “to make happy”.

Fortune shines on you when you’re happy.

Dating back to the late 14th century, the word happy first meant “lucky” — and a little later, “blessed”: it comes from the Middle English hap, meaning “chance”, “luck”, or “fortune”. And this is the case in many European languages: in Icelandic, heppinn means “happy” or “lucky”, and the Scots happin means “fortunate” or “blessed”. In Welsh, however, the word first meant “wise”.

Some other uses and phrases of happy:

During World War II and afterwards it was used as a suffix (as in bomb-happy, flak-happy) to mean “dazed or frazzled from stress.” Happy medium is from 1778. Happy ending in the literary sense dates back to 1756. Happy as a clam (from the 1630s) was originally “happy as a clam in the mud at high tide, when it can’t be dug up and eaten”. (There’s also happy as a king and happy as a sandboy.) Happy hunting ground, the reputed Indian paradise, is attested from 1840 in American English. Happy landings is a toast used among aviators. Happy families, the traditional card game, was devised by John Jaques II before the Great Exhibition of 1851. Happy hour is possibly a naval term, but those two words together — meaning a happy time for entertainment — goes back centuries…

“Therefore, my lords, omit no happy hour That may give furtherance to our expedition . . . .”
— King Henry, Shakespeare’s King Henry V