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LAUGH AT
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (verb)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Subject to laughter or ridicule
Example:
His former students roasted the professor at his 60th birthday
Synonyms:
blackguard; guy; jest at; laugh at; make fun; poke fun; rib; ridicule; roast
Classified under:
Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing
Hypernyms (to "laugh at" is one way to...):
bemock; mock (treat with contempt)
Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "laugh at"):
tease (mock or make fun of playfully)
lampoon; satirise; satirize (ridicule with satire)
debunk; expose (expose while ridiculing; especially of pretentious or false claims and ideas)
stultify (cause to appear foolish)
Sentence frames:
Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s somebody
Context examples:
The bean, who had prudently stayed behind on the shore, could not but laugh at the event, was unable to stop, and laughed so heartily that she burst.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
You will laugh at me; but I got out and walked up.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) Does the patient find humor and laugh at things that others do not find funny?
(NPI - Fine Humor and Laugh at Things That Others Do Not Find Funny, NCI Thesaurus)
The man early discovered White Fang's susceptibility to laughter, and made it a point after painfully tricking him, to laugh at him.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
You see, I laugh at the conventional little moralities of the herd; then you drift by, say a sharp, true word, and immediately I am the slave of the same little moralities.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
“And if you want to laugh at me, you have my consent and forgiveness.”
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
When Dorothy, who was an orphan, first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child's laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart whenever Dorothy's merry voice reached her ears; and she still looked at the little girl with wonder that she could find anything to laugh at.
(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)
There was a general laugh at this, and then at it they all went again, letting off into speech all those weary broodings and silent troubles which had rankled during long years of service, for an iron discipline prevented them from speaking when their feet were upon their own quarter-decks.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Let me but escape into my laboratory door, give me but a second or two to mix and swallow the draught that I had always standing ready; and whatever he had done, Edward Hyde would pass away like the stain of breath upon a mirror; and there in his stead, quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his study, a man who could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be Henry Jekyll.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
"Well, for the life of me, Professor," I said, I can't see anything to laugh at in all that.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
