I. ˈlaf, -aa(ə)-, -ai-, -ȧ-, -ä- verb
( -ed/-ing/-s )
Etymology: Middle English laughen, from Old English hliehhan, hlehhan, hlæhan; akin to Old High German lachēn to laugh, Old Norse hlæja, Gothic hlahjan to laugh, Old English hlōwan to moo — more at low
intransitive verb
1.
a. : to give audible expression to an emotion (as mirth, joy, derision, embarrassment, or fright) by the expulsion of air from the lungs resulting in sounds ranging from an explosive guffaw to a muffled titter and usually accompanied by movements of the mouth or facial muscles and a lighting up of the eyes
laughing loudly at a funny clown
others … read for the sake of sarcastically laughing — Aldous Huxley
b. : to find amusement or pleasure in something : enjoy oneself
laugh at the memory of an embarrassing encounter
c. : to become amused or derisive
her eyes laughed
he was laughing I knew though his face was … grave — George Meredith
— often used with at
a very skeptical public laughed at our early efforts — Graenum Berger
2.
a. : to produce the sound or appearance of laughter
laughing voice
laughing brook
a cypress tree that laughed with all its leaves — Ruth Tomalin
b. : to be of a kind that inspires joy
the blue sky of Autumn laughs above — Amy Lowell
transitive verb
1. : to bring to a specified state by laughing
eat and drink … and laugh themselves fat — John Trapp
this book laughs the littlest child into … manners — New York Herald Tribune
laughed aside academic rules — C.V.Woodward
laugh him to scorn
laughed away the popular taste for bombast — Van Wyck Brooks
a less able speaker would have been laughed off the stage — J.D.Hicks
2. : to utter laughingly
laughs her consent
•
- laugh in one's sleeve
- laugh on the wrong side of one's mouth
- laugh out of court
II. noun
( -s )
1.
a. : an act or instance of laughing
the appealing look passed into a smile and the smile into a laugh — Thomas Hughes
the laugh , however wry, goes deeper and hurts more than the snarl — Dudley Fitts
the longest pause … followed by the longest laugh ever heard on radio — Goodman Ace
b. archaic : a disposition to laughter : hilarity
full of laugh , and must give it some vent — John Crowne
c. : something that resembles a laugh
rejoiced to see the first laugh of the fire — Leigh Hunt
heard the laugh of a loon
2.
a. : a cause for derision or merriment : joke , advantage
the laugh of the twenties was my confident insistence that I would defeat Jack Dempsey — Gene Tunney
a book with a laugh on page one — Bennett Cerf
had the laugh on him then — David Fairchild
rack their poor brains to get the laugh of us — George Meredith
b. : an expression of scorn or mockery : jeer
he failed to make good and they gave him the laugh
even in the most straitlaced societies the laugh was against the husband — Edith Wharton
3. laughs plural : a means of entertainment : diversion , sport
girl mobsters beating up other girls simply for laughs — Newsweek
when others might ridicule or overplay it for laughs, he can write breezily of a zealous nun — John Farrelly