laugh on the other side of one's face
laugh on the other side of one's face verb: to experience discomfiture after displaying cockiness.
Verb
laugh on the other side of one's face (third-person singular simple present laughs on the other side of one's face, present participle laughing on the other side of one's face, simple past and past participle laughed on the other side of one's face)
- To experience discomfiture after displaying cockiness.
- You'll be laughing on the other side of your face when the police find out you've been lying to them.
- Socialism? Ha! ha! ha! Where’s the money to come from? Ha! ha! ha!... Hitler will at any rate go down in history as the man who made the City of London laugh on the wrong side of its face. For the first time in their lives the comfortable were uncomfortable, the professional optimists had to admit...1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn, Pt. II
Forms of laugh on the other side of one's face
| third-person singular present | laughs on the other side of one's face |
|---|---|
| present participle | laughing on the other side of one's face |
| past participle | laughed on the other side of one's face |
| past | laughed on the other side of one's face |
| alternative form | laugh on the other side of one's mouth |
| alternative form | laugh on the wrong side of one's face |
| alternative form | laugh on the wrong side of one's mouth |
| alternative form | laugh out of the other side of one's face |
| alternative US | laugh out of the other side of one's mouth |
| alternative form | laugh out of the wrong side of one's face |
| alternative form | laugh out of the wrong side of one's mouth |
Questions about laugh on the other side of one's face
- What does laugh on the other side of one's face mean?
- Laugh on the other side of one's face means to experience discomfiture after displaying cockiness.
- What part of speech is laugh on the other side of one's face?
- Laugh on the other side of one's face is a verb.
- What is the past tense of laugh on the other side of one's face?
- The past tense of laugh on the other side of one's face is laughed on the other side of one's face.
Words near laugh on the other side of one's face in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: laugh on the other side of one's face (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “laugh on the other side of one's face.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/laugh_on_the_other_side_of_one%27s_face. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.