What's the difference between happy and jovial?

Happy


Definition:

  • (superl.) Favored by hap, luck, or fortune; lucky; fortunate; successful; prosperous; satisfying desire; as, a happy expedient; a happy effort; a happy venture; a happy omen.
  • (superl.) Experiencing the effect of favorable fortune; having the feeling arising from the consciousness of well-being or of enjoyment; enjoying good of any kind, as peace, tranquillity, comfort; contented; joyous; as, happy hours, happy thoughts.
  • (superl.) Dexterous; ready; apt; felicitous.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This is not an argument for the status quo: teaching must be given greater priority within HE, but the flipside has to be an understanding on the part of students, ministers, officials, the public and the media that academics (just like politicians) cannot make everyone happy all of the time.
  • (2) Infants were habituated to models posing either prototypically positive displays (e.g., happy expressions) or positive expression blends (e.g., mock surprise).
  • (3) His greatest legacy, besides his three children, is the joy and happiness he offered to others, particularly to those fighting personal battles.
  • (4) United and West Ham are on similar runs and can feel pretty happy about themselves but are not as confident away from home as they are at home and that will have to change if they are to make ground on the top teams.
  • (5) Not even housebuilders are entirely happy, although recent government policies such as Help to Buy and the encouragement of easy credit have helped their share prices rise.
  • (6) I’m so happy to be joining Arsenal, a club which has a great manager, a fantastic squad of players, huge support around the world and a great stadium in London,” said Sánchez.
  • (7) As for gay men, there is absolutely nothing that suggests they are any less war-happy than heterosexuals.
  • (8) While the Spielberg of popular myth is Mr Nice Guy, Lean was known as an obsessive, cantankerous tyrant who didn't much like actors and was only truly happy locked away in the editing suite.
  • (9) That latter issue is quite controversial in Germany, where the Bundesbank is not happy about surrendering control to the ECB .
  • (10) The first problem facing Calderdale is sheep-rustling Happy Valley – filmed around Hebden Bridge, with its beautiful stone houses straight off the pages of the Guardian’s Lets Move To – may be filled with rolling hills and verdant pastures, but the reality of rural issues are harsh.
  • (11) Outwardly, his life was successful, happy, on course.
  • (12) Pointing out that “the army has its own fortune teller”, he sounds less than happy at the state of affairs: “The country is run by superstition.” Weerasethakul is in a relatively fortunate position, in that his arcane films are not exactly populist and don’t depend on the mainstream Thai film industry for funding, but he has become cast as a significant voice of dissent in a difficult time .
  • (13) John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, said the landowners his group represents "are obviously not happy" that the beetles are being removed.
  • (14) I was just happy he got his licence back so I could clean him out."
  • (15) He is an academy product and truthfully we are, and me above all, happy to have him with us.
  • (16) Thirty-two nursing students were shown silent films in which 10 normal and 10 schizophrenic women described a happy, sad, and an angry personal experience.
  • (17) Indeed, the distribution of couples according to a multifactorial risk index does in fact establish a connection between the couple's happiness and the level of risk during sexual relations within and outside the couple.
  • (18) But some wise old heads sniff into their handkerchiefs because they have sat through too many costly "happy ever after" ceremonies that ended in acrimony.
  • (19) I can calmly say that his future will still be at Juventus, where he feels very happy,” he parped.
  • (20) In a series of analyses guided by intuitive hypotheses, the Smith and Ellsworth theoretical approach, and a relatively unconstrained, open-ended exploration of the data, the situations were found to vary with respect to the emotions of pride, jealousy or envy, pride in the other, boredom, and happiness.

Jovial


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to the god, or the planet, Jupiter.
  • (a.) Sunny; serene.
  • (a.) Gay; merry; joyous; jolly; mirth-inspiring; hilarious; characterized by mirth or jollity; as, a jovial youth; a jovial company; a jovial poem.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) That cameo seemed horribly emblematic of a thoroughly underwhelming opening half which ended unadorned by a single shot on target, but almost imperceptibly something was shifting, and Klopp’s demeanour slowly shifted from jovially laid-back to scratchy and irritable.
  • (2) Across town in Le Central restaurant, nicknamed Hollande's canteen, the atmosphere is jovial.
  • (3) A former Socialist party leader, he is a jovial, wise-cracking believer in consensus politics, who aides say never loses his rag and who so hates fights that he was once nicknamed "the marshmallow" within his own party, or "Flanby", after a wobbly caramel pudding.
  • (4) The reports of Abbott recoiling from Davis do not speak of a reciprocal and jovial situation.
  • (5) Instead, the least attractive aspects of London 2012, the ZiL lanes and the Visa-only policy and McDonald's and Coca-Cola as purveyors of sustenance to a sporting nation, were smothered not only by the competition but by the ocean of good humour fostered by the joviality of the volunteers, the inspirational architecture and the attention given to the natural landscape (with apologies to those who had to move to make room for it all).
  • (6) Despite such brooding work, in person Stephens is lanky, jovially sweary, with a disconcerting habit of speaking in elegant sentences, and bookends our interview with heartfelt tributes to his wife and three children.
  • (7) One summer day in 1994, my best friend Steve – a gentle, jovial guy with the most disarming chuckle – called and asked me to meet him for lunch.
  • (8) What is both shocking and bewildering about Hunt’s jovial after-dinner remarks is that this is the considered view of someone whose life has been devoted to not taking the world for what it seems to be.
  • (9) His sister, remarkably jovial, wears black for their younger brother Vangelis, who died of nobody will say exactly what two years ago next month, aged 52.
  • (10) He was reported to have been in jovial form following the christening of his granddaughter at Staghall Church near Belturbet, Co Cavan on Boxing Day before returning to Mountjoy.
  • (11) He is courteous, almost jovial, though not quite endearing.
  • (12) For eight months we have lived on porridge and bread and smuggled yogurt,” says Nabil, a jovial clerk employed by a pharmaceutical company, who did not want his full name published for security reasons.
  • (13) An unusually jovial Putin asked the minister during the presentation on Friday how long the water had remained untouched by human hands.
  • (14) It cuts, for all its apparently relaxed joviality, against the zeitgeist of almost every other influence and impact upon these children in a digital, postmodern, post-moral society seeped in celebrity culture and the creatively pointless quest for quick-hit reward – as was fully intended by the Venezuelans who created El Sistema.
  • (15) One of the Demon’s men, a jovial Muscovite, gave us a number to call so we could tell his relatives where to find his body when he is killed.
  • (16) The front office was run by a jovial Cockney, Charles Vidler, who had been the butler at the Astors' country house, Cliveden, until he was fired for being found in Lord Astor's bed.
  • (17) On screen, he has a shrewd intensity but in person he's expansive and jovial.
  • (18) The jovial NBC Today Show anchor is one of eight local and national meteorologists the Obama administration invited to the White House for one-on-one interviews with the president.
  • (19) He was always cheerful and jovial, looking on the light side of life.
  • (20) Perhaps what Claire Alexander at the University of Manchester calls the “jovial bigotry” of Farage and his ilk has helped channel their rage.