Meaning

(archaic) To express joy at (an event or situation)..

Definitions by Sense

1. (archaic) To express joy at (an event or situation).
2. (archaic) To greet, welcome, salute.
3. (obsolete) Worthy of gratulation.

Example Sentences

To gratify the good Andronicus, / And gratulate his safe return to Rome, / The people will accept whom he admits.

[H]is friends and neareſt companions, / Did gratulate his ſafetie with kinde words, […]

1822, William Wordsworth, “Recovery” (Ecclesiastical Sketches/Sonnets, VII) in The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, 1827, Volume 3, p. 33, […] when a storm hath ceased, the birds regain / Their cheerfulness, and busily retrim / Their nests, or chant a gratulating hymn / To the blue ether and bespangled plain;

1881, James Thomson, “Two Sonnets,” II, in Vane’s Story, Weddah and Om-el-Bonain, and Other Poems, London: Reeves & Turner, p. 166, Striving to sing glad songs, I but attain / Wild discords sadder than Grief’s saddest tune / As if an owl with his harsh screech should strain / To over-gratulate a thrush of June.

Queen Elizabeth. […] Whither away? / Lady Anne. No farther than the Tower; and, as I guess, / Upon the like devotion as yourselves, / To gratulate the gentle princes there.

“Regard not that, my brother,” answered Magdalen Græme; “the first successors of Saint Peter himself, were elected not in sunshine but in tempests—not in the halls of the Vatican, but in the subterranean vaults and dungeons of Heathen Rome—they were not gratulated with shouts and salvos of cannon-shot and of musquetry, and the display of artificial fire—no, my brother—but by the hoarse summons of Lictors and Prætors, who came to drag the Fathers of the Church to martyrdom.[…]”

Thanks, good friend Escalus, for thy much goodness: There’s more behind that is more gratulate.

Word Forms

• gratulates
• gratulating
• gratulated
• more gratulate
• most gratulate

Related Words

When Should You Use Gratulate?

Use gratulate when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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