gratulate

verb

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

   “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, […]”

2. (archaic)To greet, welcome, salute.

   “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.”

   “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.”

adj

1. (obsolete)Worthy of gratulation.

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