Word.ws English Dictionary

underlaugh

underlaugh noun: a suppressed laugh.

Noun

underlaugh (plural underlaughs)

  1. A suppressed laugh
    • John Joy Tree greeted this with an ugly underlaugh, a barely audible sound which made Casher feel the whole situation was ridiculous.1964, Galaxy Magazine - Volume 23, Issues 1-6, page 52
    • “A stretcher case, surely,” he added, and an underlaugh rippled through the ranks and files.2011, Ward McBurney, Sap's War

Forms of underlaugh

pluralunderlaughs
alternative formunder-laugh

Origin of underlaugh

Probably derived from Middle English underlaughen (“to smile; smile with the eyes”), Middle English underlaughteren (“to smirk”), equivalent to under- + laugh.

Questions about underlaugh

What does underlaugh mean?
Underlaugh means a suppressed laugh.
What part of speech is underlaugh?
Underlaugh is a noun.
What is the plural of underlaugh?
The plural of underlaugh is underlaughs.

Words near underlaugh in the dictionary

  1. underlanguaged
  2. underlap
  3. underlapped
  4. underlapping
  5. underlaps
  6. underlaugh
  7. underlaughs
  8. underlaughter
  9. underlaundress
  10. underlaundresses
  11. underlawyer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: underlaugh (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-underlaugh.wav.

Cite this entry: “underlaugh.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/underlaugh. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.