laughter
- 1The sound of laughing, produced by air pushed out from the lungs; also any similar sound.
Laughter erupted from the audience as the comedian delivered his punchline.
The recording captured the bubbling laughter of the infant.
Similarlaughing, hilarity, mirth, merriment
Oppositecrying, tears, weeping
Note
The audible sense, and the one closest to the word's roots. Old English hleahtor meant "laughter, jubilation, derision" and goes back to an Indo-European root meaning "to shout." As a mass noun it usually takes quantity words rather than an article: Stephen Crane writes "There was some laughter" in Twelve O'Clock (1899). The plural laughters does exist, but it is the exception.
- 2An involuntary movement of the facial muscles and body, with a distinctive look in the eyes, showing amusement, satisfaction, or scorn, usually with bursts of air from the lungs.
The comedian's gestures sent the crowd into convulsions of laughter.
She bent over double, her face contorted with helpless laughter.
Similarhilarity, mirth, laughing
Note
Here laughter is something seen and felt rather than heard. Longfellow's maiden in The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858) smiles "with eyes overrunning with laughter," and there is no sound at all. Thomas Browne in 1646 already stressed how little of it is under our control. Its range of feeling, from merriment to scorn, matches the "derision" in the Old English word behind the sound of laughing.
- 3A cause of merriment; a reason for amusement or mirth.
His vain posturing made him a laughter throughout the town.
The knight's blunder became a laughter at every tavern in the realm.
Note
An archaic use that shifts the noun from the person laughing to the thing laughed at. A vain man or a knight's blunder could become a laughter to a whole town, and in this use the noun can take an article. Outside deliberately old-fashioned writing it will sound odd. Modern English says a cause for laughter instead.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English "laughter," from Old English "hleahtor" (laughter, jubilation, derision), from Proto-Germanic "*hlahtraz" (laughter) and ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to shout." It is related to German "Gelächter," Danish and Norwegian "latter," and Icelandic "hlátur," all meaning laughter.