Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use jovial in a sentence

12 example sentences · adjective

Jovial means cheerful and good-humoured; jolly, merry. Example: “A long, jovial, inane laugh broke the sudden silence which had fallen over everyone.”

Examples of jovial by meaning

adjectiveCheerful and good-humoured; jolly, merry.

  • A long, jovial, inane laugh broke the sudden silence which had fallen over everyone.1905 January 12, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “Lord Grenville’s Ball”, in The Scarlet Pimpernel, popular edition, London: Greening &...
  • But the others are all easy and jovial—thinking about the good fare that is soon to be eaten, about the hired fly, about anything.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXXIV, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC, page...

More sentences with jovial

  • His jovial, otterish, undergraduate, joshing decency was real, I decided, very country town, very West Australian.2002, Bob Ellis, Goodbye Babylon: Further Journeys in Time and Politics, Viking, published 2002, →ISBN, page 475. From the entry otterish
  • There is always a bit of jovial nonversation at the newsstand.1997, Andrew Field, Nabokov, His Life In Part, page 22. From the entry nonversation
  • A barrel-organ in the street suddenly sprang with a jerk into a jovial tune.1908, G[ilbert] K[eith] Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare, Bristol: J[ames] W[illiams] Arrowsmith, […]; London: Simpkin…. From the entry jerk
  • Most likely it is the wrench of leaving so glittersome and jovial an estate, which the learned doctor had in mind.2007, Bouck White, The Carpenter and the Rich Man. From the entry glittersome
  • Our milkman is a jovial character, but not one given to yodelling at the customers on his round.1959 March, R. C. Riley, “Home with the Milk”, in Trains Illustrated, page 154. From the entry milkman
  • He weaved away down the street, amidst the jovial joshings of the miners, to which he retorted with bibulous good nature.1936 December, Robert E. Howard, “The Vultures of Wahpeton”, in Smashing Novels Magazine. From the entry joshing
  • "For troth I'm a merry dog, I—a wanton wag, a bully boy and jovial, though woeful o' look!"1920, Jeffery Farnol, The Geste of Duke Jocelyn, Fytte 5. From the entry bully boy
  • Be jovial but not a comedian.2011, Bucky Sinister, Still Standing: Addicts Talk About Living Sober, page 97. From the entry normie
  • There was a halo about everything that Uncle John did, the radiance that goes with great kindness, the jovial gentle-heartedness of a humane man.2008, Albert Bigelow Paine, A Short Life of Mark Twain, →ISBN, page 7. From the entry gentle-heartedness
  • But the others are all easy and jovial—thinking about the good fare that is soon to be eaten, about the hired fly, about anything.”1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVI, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC. From the entry fly

Meaning of jovial

  1. adjective Cheerful and good-humoured; jolly, merry.
  2. adjective Pertaining to the astrological influence of the planet Jupiter; having the characteristics of a person under such influence (see sense 1).

Full definition of jovial

Questions about jovial in a sentence

How do you use jovial in a sentence?
Jovial is used as an adjective. For example: “A long, jovial, inane laugh broke the sudden silence which had fallen over everyone.”
What is a short sentence with jovial?
“Be jovial but not a comedian.”
What does jovial mean?
Jovial means cheerful and good-humoured; jolly, merry.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: jovial (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use jovial in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/jovial. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.