Beaming means smiling so widely and brightly that happiness seems to radiate from your face like light from the sun. When you're beaming, your smile is huge, genuine, and impossible to hide.

Picture a student who just found out she won the science fair. Her face lights up, her eyes crinkle at the corners, and her smile stretches from ear to ear. She's beaming with pride. Or imagine parents watching their child perform in the school play. They sit in the audience beaming because they're so delighted and proud.

The word connects to “beam” as in a ray of light, suggesting that your happiness shines outward for everyone to see. Someone might say, “She was absolutely beaming,” meaning her joy was so obvious and bright that everyone around her could feel it too.

You can also beam something in a different sense: to transmit or send it, like how radio stations beam signals through the air. But when we talk about people beaming, we almost always mean that unmistakable, radiant smile that announces to the world that something wonderful has happened.