Word.ws English Dictionary

laughing sickness

laughing sickness noun: the disease kuru.

Noun

laughing sickness (uncountable)

  1. The disease kuru.

Origin of laughing sickness

So called because some patients displayed risus sardonicus as a symptom.

Questions about laughing sickness

What does laughing sickness mean?
Laughing sickness means the disease kuru.
What part of speech is laughing sickness?
Laughing sickness is a noun.

Words near laughing sickness in the dictionary

  1. laughing one's head off
  2. laughing out of court
  3. laughing out of the other side of one's mouth
  4. laughing owl
  5. laughing owls
  6. laughing sickness
  7. laughing soup
  8. laughing stalk
  9. laughing stalks
  10. laughing stock
  11. laughing stocks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: laughing sickness (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: “laughing sickness.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/laughing_sickness. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.