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Fine Dictionary

laugh

læf
WordNet
During Isaac's feast of circumcision, Ishmael laughs at Isaac, who is sitting on Sarah's lap.
During Isaac's feast of circumcision, Ishmael laughs at Isaac, who is sitting on Sarah's lap.
  1. (v) laugh
    produce laughter
  2. (n) laugh
    a humorous anecdote or remark intended to provoke laughter "he told a very funny joke","he knows a million gags","thanks for the laugh","he laughed unpleasantly at his own jest","even a schoolboy's jape is supposed to have some ascertainable point"
  3. (n) laugh
    a facial expression characteristic of a person laughing "his face wrinkled in a silent laugh of derision"
  4. (n) laugh
    the sound of laughing
Illustrations
Bust of a laughing man, a needle in one hand, a jester's cap in the other. Below the performance a Dutch text in two quatrains about 'ooren [...] an naijen'.
Bust of a laughing man, a needle in one hand, a jester's cap in the other. Below the performance a Dutch text in two quatrains about 'ooren [...] an naijen'.
Allegory of the upside-down world with Democritus and Heraclitus (the laughing and the weeping philosopher). Heraclitus has sadly lowered his eyes as the smiling Democritus points to a globe. On the globe, the folly of mankind is represented by jesters who enjoy fighting, playing and making love. In the background a funeral procession and a raging sea with a sinking ship. On the globe are the devil, the Fool personified by a fool and the female personification of Lust (Luxuria). Angels with vanitas symbols in the top corners. In the margin a twelve-line poem, in three columns, in German, and an eight-line poem, in two columns, in French.
Allegory of the upside-down world with Democritus and Heraclitus (the laughing and the weeping philosopher). Heraclitus has sadly lowered his eyes as the smiling Democritus points to a globe. On the globe, the folly of mankind is represented by jesters who enjoy fighting, playing and making love. In the background a funeral procession and a raging sea with a sinking ship. On the globe are the devil, the Fool personified by a fool and the female personification of Lust (Luxuria). Angels with vanitas symbols in the top corners. In the margin a twelve-line poem, in three columns, in German, and an eight-line poem, in two columns, in French.
As punishment for laughing at the dancing nymphs, the Apulian shepherd is turned into an olive tree. In the margin a four-line caption, in two columns, in Latin.
As punishment for laughing at the dancing nymphs, the Apulian shepherd is turned into an olive tree. In the margin a four-line caption, in two columns, in Latin.
Bust of Democritus, the laughing philosopher. Print from a series of twelve prints with antique busts, four of which by Lucas Vorsterman I and eight by Boëtius Adamsz. Bolswert.
Bust of Democritus, the laughing philosopher. Print from a series of twelve prints with antique busts, four of which by Lucas Vorsterman I and eight by Boëtius Adamsz. Bolswert.
Portrait bust of a laughing jester with a foxtail hat. Instead of a hat game, the hat has a pipe. The jester wears a necklace with different vegetables and flowers.
Portrait bust of a laughing jester with a foxtail hat. Instead of a hat game, the hat has a pipe. The jester wears a necklace with different vegetables and flowers.
The Greek philosopher Democritus sits by a globe and laughs.
The Greek philosopher Democritus sits by a globe and laughs.
Drunken Noah is sleeping half naked in front of his tent and is laughed at by Ham. Shem and Japhet walk back with a cloak to cover their father with it. Print is part of a series on the Ten Commandments and depicts a violation of the fourth commandment: Honor your father and your mother. At the bottom in the margin a reference to the Bible text in Latin.
Drunken Noah is sleeping half naked in front of his tent and is laughed at by Ham. Shem and Japhet walk back with a cloak to cover their father with it. Print is part of a series on the Ten Commandments and depicts a violation of the fourth commandment: Honor your father and your mother. At the bottom in the margin a reference to the Bible text in Latin.
To the left is the laughing Aesop, Bombario in a harlequin suit, with a group of monkeys eating cabbage (the victims of the wind trade). On the right, wolves hunt sheep. In the clouds Mercury, the Dutch Lion and Father Time. In the caption a verse in four columns. Print in the hardback first edition (304 B 11) of Het Groote Tafereel der Fwaasheid with cartoons on the Windhandel or Actiehandel from 1720.
To the left is the laughing Aesop, Bombario in a harlequin suit, with a group of monkeys eating cabbage (the victims of the wind trade). On the right, wolves hunt sheep. In the clouds Mercury, the Dutch Lion and Father Time. In the caption a verse in four columns. Print in the hardback first edition (304 B 11) of Het Groote Tafereel der Fwaasheid with cartoons on the Windhandel or Actiehandel from 1720.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
Interesting fact
Children laugh about 400 times a day, while adults laugh on average only 15 times a day
  1. Laugh
    Fig.: To be or appear gay, cheerful, pleasant, mirthful, lively, or brilliant; to sparkle; to sport. "Then laughs the childish year, with flowerets crowned.", "In Folly's cup still laughs the bubble Joy."
  2. Laugh
    To affect or influence by means of laughter or ridicule. "Will you laugh me asleep, for I am very heavy?", "I shall laugh myself to death."
  3. Laugh
    To express by, or utter with, laughter; -- with out. "From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause."
  4. Laugh
    To show mirth, satisfaction, or derision, by peculiar movement of the muscles of the face, particularly of the mouth, causing a lighting up of the face and eyes, and usually accompanied by the emission of explosive or chuckling sounds from the chest and throat; to indulge in laughter. "Queen Hecuba laughed that her eyes ran o'er.", "He laugheth that winneth."
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
Interesting fact
People with allergies can lower allergy reactions by laughing
  1. laugh
    To express mirth or joy by an explosive inarticulate sound of the voice and a peculiar facial distortion; make a convulsive or chuckling noise excited by sudden merriment or pleasure.
  2. laugh
    To be or appear gay; appear cheerful, pleasant, lively, or brilliant.
  3. laugh
    To scoff playfully; make merry; flout; jeer: with at.
  4. laugh
    To express laughingly; give out with jovial utterance or manner: as, he laughed his consent.
  5. laugh
    To affect in some way by laughter, or a laughing manner; act upon by exercise of risibility: as, to laugh one's self sick or into convulsions; to laugh one out of countenance.
  6. (n) laugh
    An expression of merriment by an explosive noise; an inarticulate expression of sudden mirth or joy.
  7. (n) laugh
    Mirth or merriment, particularly at the expense of some person or thing; ridicule: used with the definite article: as, the laugh was turned against him.
Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary
Interesting fact
Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.
  1. (v.i) Laugh
    läf to express mirth or joy by an explosive inarticulate sound of the voice and peculiar facial distortion: to be gay or lively: make merry (with at), to flout
  2. (v.t) Laugh
    to express with a laugh: to affect in some way by laughter
  3. (n) Laugh
    the sound caused by merriment
Quotations
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort
The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort
There comes a time when suddenly you realize that laughter is something you remember and that you were the one laughing.
Marlene Dietrich
Oliver Goldsmith
The loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.
Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith
The best way to make your audience laugh is to start laughing yourself.
Oliver Goldsmith
William James
We don't laugh because we're happy -- we're happy because we laugh.
William James
Elsa Maxwell
Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can.
Elsa Maxwell
Idioms

Barrel of laughs - If someone's a barrel of laughs, they are always joking and you find them funny.

He who laughs last laughs longest - A person may feel satisfied or pleased when they d something bad or unfair to you, but if you can get revenge, you will feel more satisfaction.('He who laughs last laughs best' is also used, and 'he' is sometimes omitted.)

Last laugh - The person who has the last laugh ends up with the the advantage in a situation after some setbacks.

Laugh a minute - Someone who is a laugh a minute is very funny.

Laugh to see a pudding crawl - (UK) Someone who would laugh to see a pudding crawl is easily amused and will laugh at anything.

Laugh up your sleeve - If you laugh up your sleeve, you laugh at someone secretly.

Etymology

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary OE. laughen, laghen, lauhen, AS. hlehhan, hlihhan, hlyhhan, hliehhan,; akin to OS. hlahan, D. & G. lachen, OHG. hlahhan, lahhan, lahhēn, Icel. hlæja,W Dan. lee, Sw. le, Goth. hlahjan,; perh. of imitative origin

Usage in the news

What Terrorism TV's Comforting Laugh Track. nytimes.com

One way it can be helpful is by allowing people to laugh at themselves, and therefore get perspective. commonwealmagazine.org

Crime may not pay, but on USA, it's usually good for a few laughs. philly.com

Jeanne Bullock laughed when she saw her future husband's photo on CatholicMatch.com. osv.com

Steve Nash, left, and Kobe Bryant share a laugh during a game at Staples Center in 2008. latimes.com

I didn't know whether to laugh, keep going or acknowledge it. localnews8.com

"I just was that kind of a kid," Mr Long recalled with a throaty laugh, shaking his head. nytimes.com

Laugh Out Loud With New Hasbro Plush Toy. toybook.com

I had to laugh when I got a catalog from a clothing and home furnishings company recently. vgazette.com

Leicester Oteen keeps people on board the LaZoom tour bus laughing during the 90-minute tour. knoxnews.com

Don't make us laugh, Commissioner. nj.com

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the host of the Laugh Track column, a man who now waits for the bus online. cleveland.com

I can't help but laugh a little at today's selection. 1069therock.com

It made us laugh out loud. omaha.com

A smashing synthesis of pidgin rap, EDM head rush and YOLO 'tude: The token "pretty boy" rapper from K-pop crossover comers Big Bang drops a Joker laugh line ("Why so serious. rollingstone.com

Usage in scientific papers

The shaman gives a gleeful laugh, and the student holding his written prediction hands it to Sophie.
Compression Rate Method for Empirical Science and Application to Computer Vision

Only two people started to laugh: the author of the calculations, present at the meeting, and the author of this review.
The disc instability model of dwarf-novae and low-mass X-ray binary transients

We were laughing because we would have made such a comparison to show that the model does not work (see Sect. 4.1). I hope this review will prevent people from saying that the DIM works when it does not, or at least that it will make more than two people laugh when such assertions are made.
The disc instability model of dwarf-novae and low-mass X-ray binary transients

GR and QM to a cogent (ie, a conceptually sound, mathematically consistent, as well as calculationally finite) QG, seem to this author to be like trying to cross a parrot with a hyena: so that it (:QG) can tel l us what it is laughing about.
`Iconoclastic', Categorical Quantum Gravity

People with large τmax seldom laugh because point C seldom outruns point B .
Computer Model of a "Sense of Humour". I. General Algorithm

Usage in literature

But the President laughed heartily, laughed all over, and laughed his visitors out of the room. "The Clansman" by Thomas Dixon

Trampy was having his revenge: he had been laughed at; he now had the laugh on them! "The Bill-Toppers" by Andre Castaigne

It had a wretched, mirthless sound; but a laugh is a laugh. "The Huntress" by Hulbert Footner

It was what we call her cut-finger laugh, her bandage laugh. "Fairy Prince and Other Stories" by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

It was laughed at in ink that made the literary world laugh. "True to His Home" by Hezekiah Butterworth

The man laughed and the woman laughed, but they spoke not to each other, nor looked once into each other's eyes. "The Place of Honeymoons" by Harold MacGrath

I sometimes wish she would; but she merely laughs at me. "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde

He laughed readily, and one would have thought he could never laugh again. "The Trembling of a Leaf" by William Somerset Maugham

Corrigan laughed with her. "'Firebrand' Trevison" by Charles Alden Seltzer

Then Addison, who had sat and laughed till he had laughed himself tired and sober, came to the rescue, with a stroke of genius. "When Life Was Young" by C. A. Stephens

Usage in poetry
Your friends shall be the Tall Wind,
The River and the Tree;
The Sun that laughs and marches,
The Swallows and the Sea.
"For a Child" by Fannie Stearns Davis
What wonder then if many laugh,
And wonder joy was dumb!
To friends in older lands with less
Our happy hearts say "Come."
"The Irish Emigrant. 1883" by John Douglas Sutherland Campbell Author object (371)
Spotless as a lily's leaf,
Whiter than the Christmas snow;
Not a sign of sin or grief,
And the babe laughed, sweet and low.
"Life" by Abram Joseph Ryan Author object (8)
Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)
"The Flaw In Paganism" by Dorothy Parker
The depth of her dying bliss
Her grief-white butterfly knows:
And the bee laughs low in the kiss
Of another, a redder rose.
"The Way Of Love" by Edith Nesbit Author object (157)
She is so fair the wild birds there
That sing upon the bough,
Have learned the staff of her sweet laugh,
And sing no other now.
"Indifference" by Madison Julius Cawein Author object (456)