ETYMOLOGY
from French riant (smiling, laughing, cheerful, pleasant to look at), use as adjective of present participle of rire (to laugh), from Latin ridere (to laugh)
EXAMPLE (for adj. 1.)
“… Whatever was austere or earnest, still more, whatever bordered upon awe or horror, his riant fancy rejected with aversion; the rigorous moral sometimes hid in these traditions, the grim lines of primeval feeling and imagination to be traced in them, had no charms for him …”
From: German Romance: Specimens of its Chief Authors
By Thomas Carlyle, 1827
Johann August Musaeus
Lexicophilia 