- 1nB2
/ˈlæftər/ · /ˈlɑːftə/
The act of laughing, or the sound that people make when they laugh. You use it for laughing in general, not for one single laugh.
笑聲；歡笑
核心畫面
Think of a room full of sound after someone tells a joke — not one person's single 'ha', but the whole wave of it, filling the space and then dying down. That is why laughter has no plural and no 'a': it names laughing as a substance, something a room can be full of, something that can burst out, spread, or fade.
可以想成：有人講完笑話，整個房間的聲音湧上來——不是某個人「哈」的那一聲，而是那一整片、把空間填滿再慢慢退掉的東西。…更多收起
可以想成：有人講完笑話，整個房間的聲音湧上來——不是某個人「哈」的那一聲，而是那一整片、把空間填滿再慢慢退掉的東西。這也就是為什麼 laughter 不加 a、不加複數：它把「笑」當成一團可以充滿房間、可以爆開、可以擴散開來的東西在講。要指單獨一聲笑，英文用的是 a laugh。原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Laughtername
- 1
A surname.
laughternoun/ˈlɑːftə/
- 1
The sound of laughing, produced by air so expelled; any similar sound.
- Their loud laughter betrayed their presence.
- There was some laughter, and Roddle was left free to expand his ideas on the periodic visits of cowboys to the town.
- 2
A movement (usually involuntary) of the muscles of the laughing face, particularly of the lips, and of the whole body, with a peculiar expression of the eyes, indicating merriment, satisfaction or derision, and usually attended by a sonorous and interrupted expulsion of air from the lungs.
- The act of laughter, which is caused by a sweet contraction of the muscles of the face, and a pleasant agitation of the vocal organs, is not merely, or totally within the jurisdiction of ourselves.
- Archly the maiden smiled, and with eyes overrunning with laughter.
- 3
archaicA reason for merriment.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。