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Glite Dictionary
like music to someone's ears

like music to someone's ears

1 4.7
News that makes someone feel very happy or relieved
  • idiom
translation icon : música para los oídos
  • Hearing my favorite song on the radio felt like music to my ears.

Examples

  • It's like music to my ears.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • I'd say that sounds like music to my ears!

    Smurfs (2025)

  • Her shrieks of help like music to my ears.

    The Comebacks (2007)

  • When she told me the good news, it was like music to my ears.

  • The compliments he gave were like music to her ears, making her smile.

Synonyms

to tickle the ear
vslike music to someone's ears
7.3

To please someone with nice sounds like music or soft words

is about feeling comfort or pleasure from hearing something rather than the sound source

Antonyms

unpleasant
215 1.0

Not nice and causing discomfort or unhappiness

displeasing
2 4.0

Something that makes people feel dislike or annoyance

How Pleasant

like music to someone's ears
1 4.7
delightful
202 2.0
pleasing
63 2.0
acceptable
477 2.5

Surface Forms

like music to someone's ears main

Morphology

like + music + to + someone's + ear

The simile is directly compositional: 'like' signals comparison, 'music' denotes pleasing sound and 'ears' are the organs of hearing, so the phrase literally conveys that something is very pleasant to hear. This metaphor is common across many languages (e.g. Spanish, French) and follows a straightforward sensory mapping, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words should be able to infer the meaning.

Etymology

Like music to someone's ears paints a simple picture: hearing beautiful music makes a person feel happy, so good news is compared to that pleasant sound in their ears. So, it means 'very pleasant or comforting to hear'.