laughter

• laughtre (obsolete)

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.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈlɑːftə/
• (General American) enPR: lăfʹtər, IPA^(key): /ˈlæftɚ/

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• Rhymes: -ɑːftə(ɹ), -æftə(ɹ)

laughter (usually uncountable, plural laughters)

a person's laughter

1. 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.

2. 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[homas] H[arper] 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.

3. (archaic) A reason for merriment.

• laugh

• laughtre

• (Early ME) lehter, lihter, leihter, lahter, leahter, hleiter
• lauhtre, laghter, laȝter, lauȝter, laughtere, lauȝtere, laghtre, laughtre, leiȝtir, laȝtir, lauȝtur, laughtir

From Old English hleahtor, from Proto-Germanic *hlahtraz.

• IPA^(key): /ˈlau̯xtər/, /ˈlɛi̯xtər/, /ˈlaxtər/, /ˈlixtər/

laughter (plural laughtres)

1. 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.

2. An instance or bout of laughing or laughter.
3. A humorous matter; something worthy of being derided.

• English: laughter
• Scots: lachter, lauchter

• “laughter, n.(1).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-07-19.