ridicle

Noun (1)

ridicule (countable and uncountable, plural ridicules)

1. Derision; mocking or humiliating words or behavior.
   • Safe from the Bar, the Pulpit, and the Throne, / Yet touch'd and sham'd by Ridicule alone.1738, Alexander Pope, Epilogue to the Satires: Dialogue II
2. An object of sport or laughter; a laughing stock.
   • [Marlborough] was so miserably ignorant, that his deficiencies made him the ridicule of his contemporaries.1857, Henry Thomas Buckle, History of Civilization in England
3. The quality of being ridiculous; ridiculousness.
   • to see the ridicule of this monstrous practice1710 March 31 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison; Richard Steele et al.], “MONDAY, March 21, 1709–1710”, in The Spectator, number 18; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a...

Noun (2)

ridicule (plural ridicules)

1. (historical, regional) A small woman's handbag; a reticule.
   • […] while paying her own compliments to Mrs. Bates, and appearing to attend to the good old lady’s replies, she saw her with a sort of anxious parade of mystery fold up a letter which she had apparently been reading aloud to Miss Fairfax, and return it into the purple and gold ridicule by her side...1815 December (indicated as 1816), [Jane Austen], chapter XVI, in Emma: […], volume III, London: […] [Charles Roworth and James Moyes] for John Murray, →OCLC, pages 295–296

See all 6 meanings of ridicule