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laughter.

The sound of laughing, produced by air so expelled; any similar sound.

8 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈlɑːftə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈlæftɚ/General-American
  1. The sound of laughing, produced by air so expelled; any similar sound.

    uncountable · usually
    Their loud laughter betrayed their presence.
  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.

    uncountable · usually
  3. A reason for merriment.

    archaic · uncountable · usually
Where this word comes from

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.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.