Happily

5 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Happily \Hap"pi*ly\ (h[a^]p"p[i^]*l[y^]), adv. [From {Happy}.]
     1. By chance; peradventure; haply. [Obs.] --Piers Plowman.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. By good fortune; fortunately; luckily.
        [1913 Webster]


  
              Preferred by conquest, happily o'erthrown. --Waller.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. In a happy manner or state; in happy circumstances; as, he
        lived happily with his wife.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     4. With address or dexterity; gracefully; felicitously; in a
        manner to insure success; with success.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              Formed by thy converse, happily to steer
              From grave to gay, from lively to severe. --Pope.
  
     Syn: Fortunately; luckily; successfully; prosperously;
          contentedly; dexterously; felicitously.
          [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  happily
       adv 1: in a joyous manner; "they shouted happily" [syn: {merrily},
              {mirthfully}, {gayly}, {blithely}, {jubilantly}, {with
              happiness}] [ant: {unhappily}]
       2: in an unexpectedly lucky way; "happily he was not injured"
          [ant: {sadly}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  43 Moby Thesaurus words for "happily":
     agreeably, airily, blessedly, blissfully, blithely, cheerfully,
     cheerily, delightedly, ecstatically, elatedly, enthusiastically,
     exultantly, favorably, fortunately, gaily, genially, gladly,
     gleefully, heartily, hopefully, irrepressibly, jauntily, joyfully,
     jubilantly, lightly, luckily, merrily, opportunely, optimistically,
     peaceably, pleasantly, propitiously, prosperously, providentially,
     rapturously, rhapsodically, satisfyingly, smilingly, successfully,
     swimmingly, willingly, with good cheer, with pleasure
  
  

From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:

  happily adv. Of software, used to emphasize that a program is unaware
     of some important fact about its environment, either because it has been
     fooled into believing a lie, or because it doesn't care. The sense of
     `happy' here is not that of elation, but rather that of blissful
     ignorance. "The program continues to run, happily unaware that its
     output is going to /dev/null." Also used to suggest that a program or
     device would really rather be doing something destructive, and is being
     given an opportunity to do so. "If you enter an O here instead of a
     zero, the program will happily erase all your data." Neverheless, use of
     this term implies a basically benign attitude towards the program: It
     didn't mean any harm, it was just eager to do its job. We'd like to be
     angry at it but we shouldn't, we should try to understand it instead.
     The adjective "cheerfully" is often used in exactly the same way.
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  happily
       
          Of software, used to emphasise that a program is unaware of
          some important fact about its environment, either because it
          has been fooled into believing a lie, or because it doesn't
          care.  The sense of "happy" here is not that of elation, but
          rather that of blissful ignorance.  "The program continues to
          run, happily unaware that its output is going to /dev/null."
       
          [{Jargon File}]