Also 9 Sc. lauch. [f. next vb. Cf. MHG., mod.G. lache, Du. lach.]
1. The action of laughing; laughing, or an inclination to laugh; laughter. rare.
1690. Crowne, Eng. Frier, V. 45. Oh, I’me full of laugh, and must give it some vent.
1694. Congreve, Double Dealer, III. ix. 37. You are never pleased but when we are all upon the broad grin; all laugh and no Company.
1768. Goldsm., Good-n. Man, I. Do you find jest, and I’ll find laugh, I promise you.
1891. Sara J. Duncan, Amer. Girl in Lond., 191. Mr. Pratte had very blue eyes with a great deal of laugh in them.
2. An instance of laughing; (a person’s) characteristic manner of laughing.
1713. Steele, Guardian, No. 29, ¶ 1. The laugh of men of wit is for the most part but a faint constrained kind of half-laugh.
a. 1732. Gay, Fables, II. i. 36. So monstrous like the portrait’s found, All know it, and the laugh goes round.
1792. S. Rogers, Pleas. Mem., I. 33. The heart’s light laugh pursued the circling jest.
1796. Jane Austen, Sense & Sens. (1849), 227. Elinor could have forgiven everything but her laugh.
1826. J. Wilson, Noct. Ambr., Wks. 1855, I. 175. His licht-blue cunnin een, and that bashfu’ lovin lauch.
1838. Thirlwall, Greece, IV. 215. That the people could be expected to join in the laugh raised at the expense of the demagogues.
1848. Thackeray, Lett., 4 Oct., in Scribner’s Mag., I. 399/1. I laughed a sad laugh.
1857. Spurgeon, New Park St. Pulpit, II. 131. It is a figment and a fiction, a laugh and a dream.
fig. 1841. L. Hunt, Seer (1864), 4. When she stooped … over the tinder-box on a cold morning, and rejoiced to see the first laugh of the fire.
1894. W. Watson, To R. H. Hutton, Odes, etc. 2. I have seen the morn one laugh of gold.
3. In phr. To have the laugh at or of, to raise the laugh against (a person), to have or get the laugh on one’s side. On the laugh: laughing.
c. 1712. Swift, Hints Ess. Convers., Wks. 1765, XIII. 257. Singling out a weak adversary, getting the laugh on his side, and then carrying all before him.
1766. Goldsm., Vic. W., vii. This effectually raised the laugh against poor Moses.
1771. Smollett, Humph. Cl., 17 May. He … found no great difficulty in turning the laugh upon the aggressor.
1847. Marryat, Childr. N. Forest, v. You’ve beat us … and have the laugh on your side now.
1848. Thackeray, Van. Fair, vi. ‘Of course you did,’ cried Osborne, still on the laugh.
1865. Kingsley, Herew., ii. 65. If I have had my laugh at them, they have had theirs at me.
1881. Ellen E. Frewer, trans. Holub’s 7 Yrs. S. Africa, II. iv. 80. Meriko had the laugh of me.
4. = LAUGHING-STOCK. rare.
1817. Byron, Beppo, xcviii. He oft became the laugh of them.
5. attrib. and Comb., as laugh-maker, -shriek; † laugh-dove = LAUGHER 2.
1755. Man, No. 6, ¶ 1. The cry of the laugh-dove.
1834. H. Caunter, in Oriental Ann., xiv. 187. The shrill laugh-shriek of the jackal.
1850. Ht. Martineau, Hist. Peace, II. 602. The great laugh-maker, Liston.
