Laughter Adjectives

Question 1

riant

Answer 1

laughing; smiling; merry; cheerful

riant describes a person who tends to laughter, whereas funny describes something that causes laughter

Word origin of ‘riant’

Fr, prp. of rire < L ridere, to laugh: see ridicule

Question 2

funny

Answer 2

1. causing laughter; laughable; amusing; humorous

Someone or something that is funny is amusing and likely to make you smile or laugh.

Question 3

risible

Answer 3

having a tendency to laugh

riant describes a person who is laughing or who is in a laughing mood; risible secribes a person who is has a proclivity to laugh

risible (adj.)

1550s, “given to laughter,” from Middle French risible (14c.) and directly from Late Latin risibilis “laughable, able to laugh,” from Latin risus, past participle of ridere “to laugh,” a word which, according to de Vaan, “has no good PIE etymology.” Meaning “capable of exciting laughter, comical” is from 1727.

Question 4

humorous

Answer 4

Humourous refers to something which causes an inward reaction or mood that is funny or ironical, and which may or may not express itself outwardly.

He had humorous gray eyes (note that in this sentence, the observation does not imply any type of outward reaction)

Funny refers to something which tends to cause a more visible outward reaction like laughter or grinning.

He told a funny joke (implying that the observer laughed or smiled at the joke)

In ancient and medieval physiology, “any of the four body fluids” (blood, phlegm, choler, and melancholy or black bile) whose relative proportions were thought to determine physical condition and state of mind.

This led to a sense of “mood, temporary state of mind” (first recorded 1520s);

the sense of “amusing quality, funniness, jocular turn of mind” is first recorded 1680s, probably via sense of “whim, caprice” as determined by state of mind (1560s), which also produced the verb sense of “indulge (someone’s) fancy or disposition.”

Question 5

hilarious

Answer 5

adjective

1. noisily merry; boisterous and joyous
2. producing great merriment; very funny

hilarity (n.)

mid-15c., from Latin hilaritatem (nominative hilaritas) “cheerfulness, gaiety, merriment,” from hilaris “cheerful, merry,” from Greek hilaros “cheerful, merry, joyous,” related to hilaos “graceful, kindly,” and possibly from a suffixed form of the PIE root *sel- (2) “happy, of good mood” (see silly). In ancient Rome, Hilaria (neuter plural of hilaris) were a class of holidays, times of pomp and rejoicing; there were public ones in honor of Cybele at the spring equinoxes as well as private ones on the day of a marriage or a son’s birth.

Question 6

giggly

Question 7

agrin

Answer 7

adverb

in a grinning manner

Question 8

laughing

Answer 8

1. that laughs or appears to laugh a laughing brook
2. uttered with laughter a laughing remark