Dictionary Definitions of Delight etc.

In response to my previous entry, let’s go to the source and get some definitions and etymology.

Delight: a high degree of pleasure or enjoyment; joy; rapture. The word delight derives from the Latin delectare meaning "to charm."   

In my previous entry, I was redefining it by looking for small pleasures, because they feel more reliably accessible as part of an everyday gratitude and mindfulness practice. Perhaps practicing with these will lead to being able to give myself over completely to intense moments of rapture.

Awe: an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like. Awe dates back to Middle English, and referred to intense fear. The related English word awful originally meant "full of or causing intense fear." 

Fear isn’t something that came to my mind when thinking of the feeling of awe, but I can see how that would inspire respect for something larger than us—such as forces of nature and grandeur of the universe. 

Reverence: a feeling or attitude of deep respect tinged with awe; veneration. From Latin revereri meaning “to stand in in awe of, respect, honor, fear, be afraid of, revere.” 

I think that we often use this word to indicate a feeling of admiration, but I could see how it could be tinged by fear because something larger, more powerful and mysterious can make us feel small.  I think of both reverence and awe as feelings associated with spirituality.  The opening of your heart when you’re feeling respect for the intelligence of the life force that created all of the earth, the spirit that is in all beings.

Wonder: a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.  Wonder comes from the Old English word wundor, which means "marvelous thing, the object of astonishment."

Here is the surprise I associate with delight.  A state of wonder is often what children are in because everything is unfamiliar as they learn the world.  Can we reclaim that way of seeing?  To have the freshness of the mind of a beginner?   

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