high spirits

high spirits pl (plural only)

1. Joyous elation, joyfulness, joyousness.
   • 1909, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], chapter I, in The Squire’s Daughter, London: Methuen, OCLC 12026604; republished New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1919, OCLC 491297620:

     They stayed together during three dances, went out on to the terrace, explored wherever they were permitted to explore, paid two visits to the buffet, and enjoyed themselves much in the same way as if they had been school-children surreptitiously breaking loose from an assembly of grown-ups. The boy became volubly friendly and bubbling over with unexpected humour and high spirits.

   • 2000, Mary S. Lovell, A Rage to Live: A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton, W. W. Norton & Company (→ISBN), page 415:

     Apart from yachting and the cross-Channel steamer it was her first experience of being at sea and she was in high spirits.

• good spirits