Word.ws English Dictionary

pleased as punch

pleased as punch is the alternative form of pleased as Punch.

Adjective capitalized: pleased as Punch

pleased as Punch (not comparable)

  1. (colloquial, dated, simile) Pleased.
    • "[…]Now,—what'll the old woman say?"
      "She'll be pleased as Punch, I should think," said Stanbury.1869 May, Anthony Trollope, chapter XLIX, in He Knew He Was Right, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Strahan and Company, […], →OCLC
    • Then with a little start of remembrance he said, “Mary, write and give up that school. Stay and help your mother. I’m as pleased as Punch, now I’ve thought of that.”1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter XL, in Middlemarch […], volume II, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book IV, page 327
    1. (colloquial, dated, simile) Pleased with one's own actions or achievements.
    2. (colloquial, dated, sometimes, simile) Smugly so.
      • Near-synonyms: self-satisfied, complacent, smug, like a pig in clover, happy as a pig in shit
      • He was out, too, when I called at his hotel; but once, I had the good fortune to see him, with his hat curiously on one side, looking as pleased as Punch, and being driven, in an open cab, in the Champs Elysées.1840, M. A. Titmarsh [pseudonym; William Makepeace Thackeray], The Paris Sketch Book, volume I, London: John Macrone, […], →OCLC, page 41

Synonyms of pleased as punch

Forms of pleased as punch

alternative formpleased as punch

Origin of pleased as punch

From Punch of the Punch and Judy puppet shows.

Questions about pleased as punch

What does pleased as punch mean?
Pleased as punch means pleased.
What is pleased as punch the alternative form of?
Pleased as punch is the alternative form of pleased as Punch.
What part of speech is pleased as punch?
Pleased as punch is an adjective.

Words near pleased as punch in the dictionary

  1. please turn right
  2. please yourself
  3. please-time
  4. pleaseable
  5. pleased
  6. pleased as punch
  7. pleased to meet you
  8. pleased with oneself
  9. pleasedly
  10. pleasedness
  11. pleasedst

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pleased as punch (page history and authors); pleased as Punch (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-pleased as Punch.ogg, en-au-pleased as Punch.ogg.

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