underlaugh
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Example Sentences
- "John Joy Tree greeted this with an ugly underlaugh, a barely audible sound which made Casher feel the whole situation was ridiculous."
- "“A stretcher case, surely,” he added, and an underlaugh rippled through the ranks and files."
- "So in this specific role, in this specific scene, my fontal rush of propulsive fear, my prickly self-strickenness, and my strangled underlaugh that was (and still is) a result of what Sigmund Freud identified as the “liminal dilemma between the intense desire for supplication and the concurrent need for masochistic provocation” all combined to create an illusion of a brilliant stage presence, bursting with potential and future possibility."
- "Campbell laughed a quiet under-laugh, half sad, half humorous."
Etymology
Probably derived from Middle English underlaughen (“to smile; smile with the eyes”), Middle English underlaughteren (“to smirk”), equivalent to under- + laugh.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Inflected Forms
underlaughs (plural)
under-laugh (alternative)