"gladness, exultation," 1860, from jubilant + -ance.
Entries linking to jubilance
jubilant adj.
1660s (Milton), from Latin iubilantem (nominative iubilans), present participle of iubilare "to let out whoops," in Christian writers, "to shout for joy," related to iubilum "wild shout," from Proto-Italic *iu, an exclamation of joy that probably was in Proto-Indo-European (cognates: Greek iu, an interjection of amazement, iuge "crying;" Middle High German ju, juch, an exclamation of joy; Dutch juichen, Old Norse yla, English yowl). With ending as in sibilant. Related: Jubilantly.
-ance
word-forming element attached to verbs to form abstract nouns of process or fact (convergence from converge), or of state or quality (absence from absent); ultimately from Latin -antia and -entia, which depended on the vowel in the stem word, from PIE *-nt-, adjectival suffix.
Latin present-participle endings for verbs stems in -a- were distinguished from those in -i- and -e-. Hence Modern English protestant, opponent, obedient from Latin protestare, opponere, obedire.
As Old French evolved from Latin, these were leveled to -ance, but later French borrowings from Latin (some of them subsequently passed to English) used the appropriate Latin form of the ending, as did words borrowed by English directly from Latin (diligence,absence).
English thus inherited a confused mass of words from French (crescent/croissant), and further confused it since c. 1500 by restoring -ence selectively in some forms of these words to conform with Latin. Thus dependant, but independence, etc.