laughterとは 意味・読み方・使い方

語源

From 中期英語 laughter, laghter, laȝter, from 古期英語 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.

発音

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈlɑːftə/
• (General American) enPR: lăfʹtər, IPA: /ˈlæftɚ/
• 韻: -ɑːftə(ɹ), -æftə(ɹ)

名詞

laughter (usually uncountable, plural laughters)

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.

派生語

関連する語

• laugh

アナグラム

• laughtre

語源

From 古期英語 hleahtor, from Proto-Germanic *hlahtraz.

発音

• IPA: /ˈlau̯xtər/, /ˈlaxtər/
• IPA: /ˈlæi̯xtər/ (uncommon, Southern or South Midland)

名詞

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.

派生した語

• English: laughter
• Scots: lachter, lauchter

参照

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