laughter
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See also: Laughter
English
Alternative forms
- laughtre (obsolete)
Etymology
From Middle English laughter, laghter, laȝter, from Old English hleahtor (“laughter, jubilation, derision”), from Proto-Germanic *hlahtraz (“laughter”), from Proto-Indo-European *klek-, *kleg- (“to shout”). Cognate with German Gelächter (“laughter, hilarity, merriment”), Danish and Norwegian latter (“laughter”), Icelandic hlátur (“laughter”). More at laugh.
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈlɑːftə/
- (General American) enPR: lăfʹtər, IPA(key): /ˈlæftɚ/
Audio (US): (file) - Rhymes: -ɑːftə(ɹ), -æftə(ɹ)
Noun
laughter (usually uncountable, plural laughters)
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a person's laughter
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- The sound of laughing, produced by air so expelled; any similar sound.
- Their loud laughter betrayed their presence.
- 1899, Stephen Crane, chapter 1, in Twelve O'Clock:
- There was some laughter, and Roddle was left free to expand his ideas on the periodic visits of cowboys to the town.
- A movement (usually involuntary) of the muscles of the laughing face, particularly of the lips, and of the whole body, with a peculiar expression of the eyes, indicating merriment, satisfaction or derision, and usually attended by a sonorous and interrupted expulsion of air from the lungs.
- 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: , London: T H for Edward Dod, , →OCLC:
- The act of laughter, which is caused by a sweet contraction of the muscles of the face, and a pleasant agitation of the vocal organs, is not merely, or totally within the jurisdiction of ourselves.
- 1858 October 16, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Courtship of Miles Standish”, in The Courtship of Miles Standish, and Other Poems, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC:
- Archly the maiden smiled, and with eyes overrunning with laughter.
- (archaic) A reason for merriment.
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
sound (as) of laughing
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movement of the muscles of the laughing face
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
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Anagrams
Middle English
Alternative forms
- (Early ME) lehter, lihter, leihter, lahter, leahter, hleiter
- lauhtre, laghter, laȝter, lauȝter, laughtere, lauȝtere, laghtre, laughtre, leiȝtir, laȝtir, lauȝtur, laughtir
Etymology
From Old English hleahtor, from Proto-Germanic *hlahtraz.
Pronunciation
Noun
laughter (plural laughtres)
- Laughter; the production of laughs or snickers.
- a. 1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, “Book IV”, in Troilus and Criseyde, lines 862–868:
- She was right swich to seen in hir visage / As is that wight that men on bere binde / Hir face, lyk of Paradys the image / Was al y-chaunged in another kinde. / The pleye, the laughtre men was wont to finde / On hir, and eek hir Ioyes everychone, / Ben fled, and thus lyth now Criseyde allone.
- She was such to see in her visage / like that woman that men on a bier notice; / Her face which was the image of Paradise / had totally changed to another kind; / the play, the laughter men tended to find / on her, and all her joys as well / had left, and there Cressida now lies alone.
- An instance or bout of laughing or laughter.
- A humorous matter; something worthy of being derided.
Descendants
References
- “laughter, n.(1).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-07-19.