Definition of "gratulate"
gratulate
verb
third-person singular simple present gratulates, present participle gratulating, simple past and past participle gratulated
(archaic) To express joy at (an event or situation).
Quotations
To gratify the good Andronicus, / And gratulate his safe return to Rome, / The people will accept whom he admits.
c. 1588–1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene i]
(archaic) To greet, welcome, salute.
Quotations
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.
c. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act IV, scene i]
“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. […]”
1820, [Walter Scott], chapter XIII, in The Abbot. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Company, and John Ballantyne, […], page 276
[…] 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;
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
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.
1881, James Thomson, “Two Sonnets,” II, in Vane’s Story, Weddah and Om-el-Bonain, and Other Poems, London: Reeves & Turner, p. 166
adjective
comparative more gratulate, superlative most gratulate
(obsolete) Worthy of gratulation.
Quotations
Thanks, good friend Escalus, for thy much goodness:There’s more behind that is more gratulate.
c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act V, scene i]