What are the laughing stock?
Meaning of laughing stock in English someone or something that seems stupid or silly, especially by trying to be serious or important and not succeeding: Another performance like that and this team will be the laughing stock of the league. SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases. Stupid and silly people. airhead.
How do you use laughing stock?
If you say that a person or an organization has become a laughing stock, you mean that they are supposed to be important or serious but have been made to seem ridiculous. The truth must never get out. If it did she would be a laughing-stock.
Is it laughing or stock stalking?
If you say that a person or an organization has become a laughing stock, you mean that they are supposed to be important or serious but have been made to seem ridiculous.
What is the origin of the word laughing stock?
laughing-stock (n.) also laughingstock; 1510s, formed by analogy with whipping-stock “whipping post,” later also “object of frequent whipping” (but that word is not attested in writing in this sense until 1670s).
Who created the phrase a laughing stock?
The first recorded use of this idiom dates to the 16th century. In 1533 John Frith coined the phrase in his “An other boke against Rastel.” This reads “Albeit … I be reputed a laughing stock in this world.”
Who said a laughing stock?
In Act 3, scene 1, Sir Hugh Evans says to Doctor Caius: “Pray you let us not be laughing-stocks to other men’s humours; I desire you in friendship, and I will one way or other make you amends.”
What does “laughing stock” mean?
Definition of “laughing stock” – English Dictionary. “laughing stock” in English. › someone or something that seems stupid or silly, especially by trying to be serious or important and not succeeding:
Is the team the laughingstock of the league?
The team has become the laughingstock of the league. The mayor became a laughingstock.
Why is poetry fallen to be the laughing stocke of children?
“Poetry is fallen to be the laughing stocke of children.” The age of the phrase may be the reason that it is often linked with the practice of putting people into stocks as a punishment. The stocks were a means of punishment in use at the time the phrase was coined, by which people were tortured or ridiculed.
What is the meaning of the term’stocking’?
The stocks were a means of punishment in use at the time the phrase was coined, by which people were tortured or ridiculed. Victims were held by having their ankles, and occasionally the wrists too, trapped in holes between two sliding boards.